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Could someone tell me what this name means? When I ask Google to translate it, I get some very odd results. When I type in becken, Google says it means "pool" and if I type in bauer, Google says it means "farmer" (and so do we). If I put in the whole word, beckenbauer, Google is stumped and just returns the same. As an added twist, if I type in becken-bauer with the hyphen it comes back as "Pelvic bauer" via the mobile site, but just returns "becken-bauer" while on my PC. Leaving aside why Google translate would work differently like that, what the heck is meant by "pool farmer"? Is it an idiomatic expression? 99.235.223.170 (talk) 01:07, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Becken more specifically means "basin". In this context, definitions 3 or 4 in that link make sense.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 01:22, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it follows that the pelvis could be described as a basin, but what kind of farm is that? Would it mean a farmer that's stuck with low country (so to speak)? 99.235.223.170 (talk) 02:03, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

English "pelvis" comes from Latin pelvis which meant "basin". The German meaning "pelvis" (becken), is a calque from the latin. See also, Becken (Anatomie) and the different articles listed at Becken and their English counterparts.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 02:30, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

According to https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Beckenbauer the name is not related to Becken (basin), but to backen (to bake). It was the occupational surname for a farmer who also operated a bakery. 195.75.179.149 (talk) 06:02, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Cool - thank you! 99.235.223.170 (talk) 03:00, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

German lingual usage equal words: Becken also known for sink, Waschbecken in german words waschen + Becken = wash basin. This for information only, to know it as similar to tubs.

Beckenbauer = basin maker or basin manufacturer. While Bauer or Landwirt is the German word for farmer and bauen = to build. bauer is former not current derive from bauen. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 23:33, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I managed to find statistics about which parts of speech are most common in English, depending the context: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/55486/what-are-the-percentages-of-the-parts-of-speech-in-english. Are similar statistics available for other languages? Munci (talk) 01:08, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You can find this information using a text corpus. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:58, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's a start. So I could use the German Reference Corpus to find such statistics about German for example. Any idea how to insert that into the dictionary application Toolbox for example? Munci (talk) 16:11, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What does this phrase mean?>--178.104.65.199 (talk) 03:44, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you had typed it into Google, result #1 would have been this. --Jayron32 03:47, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose the OP couldn't be arsed. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 03:57, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I had looked this up a few years ago with no web resul;ts whatever, so this time I just couldnt be arsed.--178.104.65.199 (talk) 13:35, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no, sorry that was another phrase.--178.104.65.199 (talk) 13:36, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: the phrase is often abbreviated to CBA TBH (to be honest) and frequently contracted further to the just the single word "seebs". Martinevans123 (talk) 13:45, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Because they can't be arsed even to say the abbreviation? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:22, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So it doesnt mean an anti homosexual man than, Jack?--178.104.65.199 (talk) 00:53, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What kind of a half-arsed question is that? Akld guy (talk) 05:41, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's not even a comprehensible English sentence. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:23, 20 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

Rather a recent innovation this; I recall the first time that I heard it in the late 1980s, I thought that the speaker was saying "can't be asked" which made no sense. Actually "arsed" doesn't make much more sense either. Alansplodge (talk) 09:39, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen the "asked" variation as a bowdlerised, pre-watershed sort of usage in the UK. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:13, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Surely fucked preceded arsed here? And didn't it start out as very lowly and polite bothered? At least in jolly old proper UK Queen's English? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:58, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, when I was working in Japan at a language centre, there was an American who would work one day with me, and he'd been told to do something by the manager which was not in the contract, so I said to him, "I couldn't be arsed doing that!" and he said "I couldn't be bothered!", totally missing the point that I hadn't said 'asked', but rather 'arsed'. I take it it's not familiar to our friends over the pond? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 15:34, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's not used in America, that I know of. Googling the subject leads to various theories, but one that fits is that the "can't be" is short for "can't be bothered to", i.e. can't be bothered to get up off it and do whatever someone's proposing to do. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:06, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's not heard here, and even though I watch more British TV (when I can get it) than American, I would have assumed a non-rhotic speaker was saying "asked". Americans routinely leave out the k (it assimilates to the dentals) leaving "assed" /æst/ for asked/æskt/. μηδείς (talk) 17:23, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Haha, yes Lauren is quite an archetype of yoof cultcha. But if you've read the book, why not listen to the song? Or am I just reminiscing here?Martinevans123 (talk) 17:47, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I just can't be arsed to comment on this thread .... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.128.129 (talk) 01:17, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Possible origin (archaic): I can't be tasked (to do that). Akld guy (talk) 02:12, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that was almost possible. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:46, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The languages are as following (Please native speakers only):

Spanish, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Amharic.

The sentence is:

Good morning to all of you, welcome to the five-day-course of our project - Sapehl - for fulfilling individual potential to attain excellence, version two thousand fifteen.

By "course" I mean (of course): a period of learning.

If you could give also the phonetic scripts (which is more important to me), whether in IPA or in any other way easily understood by English readers, I will appreciate it. 10:55, 19 November 2015 (UTC) 77.125.152.2 (talk)

Perhaps you could translate "personal talents of excellence" into English first, to give us a clue? 78.98.70.30 (talk) 10:58, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed it. Is it now clearer? 77.125.152.2 (talk) 11:10, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Still not really sure what could be "developing personal excellence", but let's try French:

Bonjour à tous, bienvenus dans notre cours de cinq jours, faisant partie de notre projet Sapehl, destiné à developper vos compétences personelles and atteindre l'excellence, version deux mille quinze.

--Lgriot (talk) 21:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I see the problem you pointed at, so I've changed the sentence again, and I hope now it's more comprehensible. Could you please change also your translation according to the current version? 05:49, 20 November 2015 (UTC) 77.125.152.2 (talk)

I'm not the original translator, but here goes: Bonjour à tous, bienvenue dans notre cours de cinq jours, faisant partie de notre projet Sapehl, version deux mille quinze, visant à developper vos compétences personelles et atteindre l'excellence. (I'm guessing that 2015 applies to the course, not to excellence, so I've moved it up in the sentence to make it clearer). --Xuxl (talk) 09:54, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Typos: développer [acute accent on the first "e"] — personnelles [with two "n"] — AldoSyrt (talk) 08:32, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Whenever I go on the BBC News website, I see headlines such as Paris attacks: 'I will not give you the gift of hating you'. Why does the site use an 'apostrophe' instead of a "quote", when it is quite clearly a quote? --Yonglingtonshire (talk) 11:31, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See Quotation_mark#Quotation_marks_in_English. 78.98.70.30 (talk) 11:41, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Like the user above has mentioned, these are not apostrophes but are single quotes. Since single quotation marks are used when nested inside of a set of double quotation marks, my guess is that this is used to make it easy to copy-and-paste an article title and then cite it. (Note that, when citing a news article—for example, using a news article as a reference in a Wikipedia article or something like that—many citation styles dictate that you put the article title in double quotes, and thus a quotation within the article title would then go in single quotes.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:14, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Let me just briefly note what is in the article that 78' linked just above:

• In ordinary American usage, double quotation marks are first-level (outside), and single quotation marks are second-level (inside).
• In ordinary British usage, that is reversed: single quotation marks are first-level, and double are second-level.

That's all you're seeing; nothing fancy about it. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:36, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• What, people exist who still alternate nested quotation marks?! —Tamfang (talk) 06:05, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The BBC, like many publishers, has its own style guide which, in this case, states that the organisation prefers single quotation marks over double ones: [1], about 2/3 through the page. Bazza (talk) 21:44, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Two points:

• Even in Britain, some publishers prefer to use double quotes as the first level.
• Even in newspapers that use double quotes as the first level, you will often see single quotes used in headlines. Presumably the designers feel that reducing the amount of space taken up by punctuation is more important than consistency with their normal style. (Similarly, in headlines it is common to see the word "and" replaced with a comma, and commas omitted when they are at the end of a line.) Here are three examples in front pages hosted on the Newseum web site. (I believe these URLs will be good for a couple of days and then expire.)

• From the Seattle Times
• From the Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ)
• From the National Post (Toronto)

In each case one of the main headlines on the front page uses single quotes, even though the body of the same story uses double quotes.

--70.49.170.168 (talk) 05:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How do we decide how many books high-schoolers have to read?

Is there any empirical evidence that we have to read at least x (be it 20, 30, or 40) books to write properly?

--Scicurious (talk) 14:14, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As for how people decide, that varies from place to place; depending on where you are you could probably read up on how the curriculum for that school or state was determined. It's not really about number of books so much as content (i.e., a certain selection of books that people agree are culturally or intellectually important and that students should be familiar with).

As for your second question, no, there is no exact number of books someone needs to read to learn how to write; books vary in their length and complexity, schools vary in how effectively they teach writing, and people vary in their learning ability and style. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One thing to keep in mind is that some required reading is a good lesson in how not to write - literary junk such as Silas Marner or Moby-Dick. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:34, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I suppose if people in Utah don't read Catch 22, that has a political explanation, not an educational one.

Regarding the 2nd part: maybe finding the number of books that descent writers have read is kind of tricky. However, still regarding the empirical evidence, is there any research about reading habits of good writers?--Scicurious (talk) 14:37, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• "Descent writer" is that decadent writer? --Denidi (talk) 17:46, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Presumably "decent" writer was meant. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 05:02, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to find more information on this topic, you can type "X grade reading list" into Google, and see what recommended reading lists exist for students in each grade. Here is a sample of books for the 9th grade, for example. --Jayron32 14:48, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's not about the lists as such, but about the reasoning behind the list, how they got into existence. --Scicurious (talk) 15:01, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an early reading list from 1934. This is an outgrowth of a concept known as a canon, specifically the Western canon. Individual books are chosen by individual school districts, but generally try to represent their version of the western canon: the notion being that there should be a set of works which are shared among an entire culture, to provide a unified experience within the culture. That's what canon is all about. --Jayron32 15:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also of interest: List of most commonly challenged books in the United States for good books that belong banned across schools, according to certain groups. Denidi (talk) 17:46, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Some of those are definitely not appropriate for high school classes. I recall we had to read Lord of the Flies, and my thought was, "Why are we reading this garbage?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Silas Marner and Moby-Dick above, and now, Lord of the Flies: did you come to this thread just to tell us what books you hated at school? And I don't believe anyone wanted to ban the books I linked above based on their supposedly poor literary qualities. The reason is probably profanity, depicting homosexuals as normal people, sexual content, and promoting socialist ideas. Denidi (talk) 18:39, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Don't worry, Denidi. We all go through stages, and many of the opinions and attitudes we held as callow 16-year olds turn out to be embarrassing in retrospect as we mature and bring our wider world experience into the equation. But there's an exception to every rule, and Bugs seems to be stuck at 16. It happens. On the one hand, there are the billions of words that have been written about Moby-Dick and LOTF (Golding was even awarded a Nobel Prize). OTOH, we have the very succinct critique "They're garbage" from Baseball Bugs. All I can say is, thank God he's not a paid literary critic, 'cos I'd feel very short-changed indeed. Imagine if a child went up to a librarian seeking assistance in finding Moby-Dick on the shelves, and was told not to even bother because "It's garbage". That would be the librarian from Hell.

However, even wacky viewpoints have their adult adherents, so what I'd rather see from Bugs is a citation from a reliable source saying "They're garbage" or words to that effect, and not just his own personal opinion, because, Heaven knows and he does too, that this page is not for the expression of personal opinions. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:18, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the cliffnotes version of Silas Marner, it sounds a lot more interesting than what we were compelled to read in high school. The overall point being that a significant amount of high school required reading was over some of our heads. It had the effect of totally turning me off to literature. On the "trying-to-ban" list, I was surprised to see Tom Sawyer but not Huckleberry Finn, as the latter was the controversial one in my day. And a much more interesting read, FYI. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:42, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So, you were "totally turned off literature". That's not unknown. How does that admitted complete lack of exposure to these works qualify you to have any opinion at all on them, whether negative, positive or something else? If "they're garbage" is code for "I couldn't get into them, and never read enough to form a proper opinion", why not say that? If your experience were relevant to this thread, that is. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:48, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, no, no. We were forced to read Silas Marner, and it was wretched. Yet I've always been told that I write well. So I'm questioning the premise behind the OP's question: How does reading the works of dead authors help anyone write better? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:54, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see what you're on about now. You're taking three books that didn't happen to appeal to you when you were 16, and on that basis questioning the whole concept of reading classic books as an educative experience? Maybe you learned to write well despite them? Maybe you learned more than you know or care to admit?

Do you think it would be an easy task to set a syllabus of books that were guaranteed to be enjoyed by every single student? Would that even be a wise goal? Setting only readily accessible material for students is surely no way to foster perseverance and a sense that some things require effort and application before they reveal their jewels, and are worth that effort. Exposure has its merits. Otherwise, adults would still be watching only cartoons and reading only comic books. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:13, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot more we were forced to read, and I would have to wrack my brain to come up with something I liked. Although maybe it was less about the book than about the way it was taught. I was more interested in factual stuff. When others were reading Catcher in the Rye (which I got through maybe a page or two before giving it back to the library or whatever), I was reading the encyclopedia and the dictionary. In any case, I would still like to know how reading fiction from past centuries improves one's writing style. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Damnit, are you people even trying: [2] --Jayron32 21:12, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I find Baseball Bugs to be very trying Akld guy (talk) 05:36, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Try" reading Moby-Dick and you'll find out all about "trying". Based on Jayron's links, if I do write well it's because I read encylopedias and dictionaries when I was in school. And I still do. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:12, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bugs, you have some sympathy from me, since I hated reading Catcher, In Cold Blood, Gullivers Travels, To Build a Fire, Red Badge of Courage, A Separate Peace, Waiting for Godot, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Grapes of Wrath, David Copperfield, Tess of the D'Urnervilles, and just about anything else I was assigned in school. In fact, the only book I had to read that I enjoyed reading was To Kill a Mockingbird. I did, however, choose to read Moby Dick at age 19, and enjoyed it, after being assigned and liking Benito Cerino in college.

I was told towards the end of my public schooling when I asked why we didn't read anything actually entertaining that the books we were assigned were based on a list of classics (Dickens, Shakespeare) to which titles like Catcher, Red Badge, Separate Peace, and Portrait of the Artist had been added in the 70's to make reading more relevant to "youth". My experience was that what I read by word of mouth from teachers, such as Lord of the Rings, Watership Down, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Fountainhead was much more rewarding. I know that many of those books were actually taught in other high schools, as all those titles I just mentioned were on sale in Barnes and Nobles as "summer reading" assigned by various school districts I did not attend. μηδείς (talk) 18:29, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." --Jayron32 20:07, 20 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

Haha! But I read LotR at 11, and AS long after I lost my virginity... BTW, if you find it, please let me know.... μηδείς (talk) 22:31, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I do recall being forced to read Red Badge of Courage. Several of the others are English works, and since English lit was an option for seniors, I skipped it. What you're saying in general confirms my suspicions that the problem was not so much the books, but the way they were taught. Oddly enough, I liked better the Spanish-language works we read in Spanish classes. Maybe because they were being taught correctly. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:36, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is "Bien sûr! Pour vous, rien." proper French?

Does "Pour vous, rien", mean "For you, anything" or "For you, nothing"? Or could it mean either of those depending on the context?

Thank you. CBHA (talk) 22:02, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It means "For you, anything". While "rien" could mean "nothing" or "anything" depending on the context, in THAT context, it means "anything". --Jayron32 01:16, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Merci beaucoup! CBHA (talk) 04:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

De rien! --Jayron32 04:06, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well there is no context in that sentence, so, as a native French speaker, I read it as: "For you, nothing". (For example, everyone gets paid, but you get nothing since you didn't work a lick). It could mean: "for you, there is nothing I wouldn't do" (i.e., I'd do anything), but that interpretation would require more context. --Xuxl (talk) 10:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the "Bien sûr..." ("Of course!") bit implies the speaker is in agreement with their interlocutor. The sense of the entire sentence is "Of course! For you [I'd do] anything". Regarding the difference between "For you, There is nothing I wouldn't do" and "I'd do anything", that's part of the problem with word-for-word rather than sense-for-sense translating. The idiom here is clearly that the speaker is meaning to say what in English would be "Of course, for you, anything..." "Rien" doesn't have a direct one-to-one correspondence to a single English word... --Jayron32 10:53, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Bien sûr" means "of course" and does not necessarily imply agreement. "Pour vous, rien" means "for you, nothing" and cannot mean "for you, anything", and it doesn't depend on the context. The context could be "many problems for the others, but for you, no problem", but the context doesn't affect the meaning of this "rien" which here means "nothing". French native speaker here too. Akseli9 (talk) 12:32, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Jayron32, if the speaker here is meaning to say what in English would be "Of course, for you, anything", then "Bien sûr! Pour vous, rien" is not proper French and he should have said something like "Bien sûr! Pour vous, tout ce que vous voulez" or "Bien sûr! Pour vous, c'est quand vous voulez". Akseli9 (talk) 12:51, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

My french is a bit rusty, so I defer to the native speakers. Je suis désolé. --Jayron32 13:36, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You were correct though in pointing that "rien" sometimes means "quelque-chose" and can sometimes have a weird handling. Akseli9 (talk) 13:44, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is because "rien" comes from Latin "res" (well, actually the accusative "rem"), which does mean "thing". Historically, in Old French "rien" was simply the positive word "something". Similarly, "aucun" simply meant "any"/"anyone", but today neither of those words can be separated from the negative construction. But sometimes the second component of a French negative can be used in a positive sense, e.g. "plus" by itself can mean "more" or "no more", and "personne" by itself can mean "a person" or "no one". Adam Bishop (talk) 15:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's why idiomatic translations come across better than trying to find the "one word". The "ne....XXXX" (ne...plus, ne...rien, ne...jamais, etc.) construction in French has no English equivalent, and is the source of some of these imperfect translations... --Jayron32 16:12, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

An example with "rien" meaning "quelque chose": "Y a-t-il rien d'autre ?; "Is there anything else?" — AldoSyrt (talk) 16:22, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Why not, "Pour vous, le monde"? μηδείς (talk) 18:14, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah I forgot "jamais", which can mean either "never", or (in a positive sense) "ever". Adam Bishop (talk) 15:58, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be a Britishism and I have only seen it in print in relation to scheduling of TV programmes - e.g. "What time and when is I'm a Celebrity on tonight?" - to quote a typical usage of this type. What's the difference between "what time" and "when" in this context? I thought perhaps the "when" refers to dates while "what time" refers to hours and minutes, but that wouldn't make sense in this context as the same headline already specifies "tonight" for the date. If it is an idiomatic expression, is it only found in British English, or does your variety of English have it too? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:32, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See idiom. To quote, "In linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of speech contradicting the principle of compositionality." That means that an idiom is a phrase which resists meaningful analysis by parts. "What time and when" is idiomatic in the sense that you cannot provide the sort of meaning you are asking for. It's an idiom which just means (in standard English) "when". The separate bits are not meant to be understood individually. --Jayron32 20:03, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Society of Redundancy Society. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:04, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Never seen it or heard of it being used in New Zealand English. Akld guy (talk) 00:27, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is it common anywhere? I've not heard it in my region of Britain. Google books finds only two examples for me: one is British and one is American. Dbfirs 00:37, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a couple of examples from the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph ^[1][2]Dja1979 (talk) 01:59, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In both of those examples, the "when" part seems to refer to the date. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:35, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find the expression in either of those links. Is the internet serving me something different? They are not actually from the newspaper, are they? Dbfirs 23:34, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am a British English speaker and I have never heard of any idiom "what time and when". To me it could make sense if "when" means the date and "what time" means the time of day, but "What time and when is I'm a Celebrity on tonight?" sounds wrong. 86.183.128.129 (talk) 01:14, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard this horrible phrase spoken either (in London) but a quick Google search throws up pages of UK-based examples. I despair. Alansplodge (talk) 01:37, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So do I! There are also examples of this sort of colloquial usage from America and New Zealand. I have a feeling that this type of reduplication has its origin in Irish English, but I can't find any evidence, so perhaps I'm wrong. Dbfirs 09:15, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please show links to usage in New Zealand. And please be aware that some publications in NZ, including the respected New Zealand Herald newspaper, openly admit to using US spelling and convention instead of New Zealand English, for which they will never be forgiven by me as long as I live. Akld guy (talk) 11:00, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The French "aujourd'hui" is beyond despair, as we already forgot its etymologic sense is literally "on the day of today", and as more and more often nowadays is it heard an even more redundant "au jour d'aujourd'hui", which means literally "on today's day of today"... Akseli9 (talk) 04:32, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Or even more literally, "on the day of on the day of today". —Tamfang (talk) 06:08, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Plus "hui" comes from Latin "hodie", which is itself an abbreviation of "hoc die", "on this day", so you could say it means "on the day of on the day of on this day". Adam Bishop (talk) 12:15, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

But probably sounds too much like "oui", and so got qualified. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:53, 22 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]

Or rather, too much like huit ('eight'). —Tamfang (talk) 08:09, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be an automatic headline/question generator on Telegraph.co.uk that starts off with "what time and when" - some of the sentences end with "on TV this weekend" where there's some sense, others end in "on TV tonight". "What time and what channel" seems better though and I expect someone goofed. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:53, 22 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]

Interesting, I took the example in the original question from Telegraph.co.uk, but have also seen it elsewhere - typing it into Google throws up stuff like https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/3oo66u/what_time_and_when_is_the_stress_test/?, http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-12-02/doctor-who-2014-christmas-special-air-time-revealed, http://community.babycenter.com/post/a59302825/boyfriendchilds_father_has_been_hiding_our_baby_from_his_last_baby_mama, http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/FAQ_Answers-g34515-d85429-t1114976-Before_arriving_this_hotel_I_stayed_on_Disney.html. When I start typing "What time and when..." into Google, it also suggests "what time and when is a blue moon". Interestingly, the Tripadvisor post is from someone who lives in Canada.

It sounds like a rare colloquialism and probably not intended to mean anything more than "what time". Perhaps whoever wrote the Telegraph script belongs to whatever regional or cultural group where this usage is common. Now if only someone knows what that group is... --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:43, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all,

• Пенкина, Светлана Александровна in Russian
• Пєнкіна, Світлана Олександрівна in Ukrainian

I can read her name by sounding out the letters, one by one, but that's not going to help me find relable sources for this article.
Your assistance would be appreciated. Petr aka --Shirt58 (talk) 04:25, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your request is not clear. Do you need an IPA transcription? I was about to add it but then I thought you have asked something else. Though if you ask to find, translate and add sources to the article, I am not much help as I am absolutely uninterested in such articles. I think you'll hardly find anything else that is not already in the Russian version--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 07:38, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, I should have been more specific.

(I'm fascinated with Linguistics - especially Phonology - though I've never studied it. WP:RD/L is my MOOC. An IPA transcription would be of great interest to me, but wouldn't really assist saving the article from WP:BLPPROD deletion.)

What I am looking for is reliable sources for her date of birth, her movies and so on. I can't find any in English, and was hoping someone could find them in Russian.

--Shirt58 (talk) 09:02, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This Arabic word appears in the name of the Al-Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center (active 2006 to mid-2011 in the Levant and North Africa) and the recently-founded French Fondation Al-Kawakibi, described as a "world forum for [discussing] the reform of Islam." What's the literal meaning of the word? Does it have any figurative associations from Islam or Arab culture? -- Deborahjay (talk) 18:49, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi? --Jayron32 20:08, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Quite likely, as he seems an influential figure in the anti-Ottoman pan-Arabism of his day, with mentions of "reform" views of Islam (which is the source of my interest, see fr:Félix Marquardt). I'd still like to know the etymology of the name - is it perhaps toponymic? Per that page, he studied in his youth at a madrasa al-Kawakibi in his home town of Aleppo, where his well-off parents might have been patrons of the school. But which is the namesake? Further, in The Emergence of the Arab Movements (Routledge Press, 1993), Eliezer Tauber writes that al-Kawakibi's family was "of Kurdish origin." (I'll add this content to the page when I get it sorted out.) -- Deborahjay (talk) 21:09, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Having only a passing familiarity with Semitic languages in general, this is not much more than an OR guess, but is the name possibly derived from the same root as kawkab (كوكب, "planet", "star"; cognate with Hebrew kochavim)?--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 02:27, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, kawakib is the plural of kawkab, and Kawakibi is a common surname in Islamic countries. Omidinist (talk) 04:52, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I had always thought that the "emo" in "emoji" was from English "emotion", similar to "emoticon", but apparently it is from unrelated Japanese words. Even so, was the Japanese word influenced in any way by the English, or is the "emo" similarity entirely a linguistic coincidence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.128.129 (talk) 20:28, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

According to Emoji, it means "picture character" in Japanese. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:04, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, yes, I know. Those are the "unrelated Japanese words". 86.183.128.129 (talk) 01:12, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The word emoji is much older than cell phones and I think it's more or less the same as English "pictogram". The Japanese Wikipedia article mentions rongorongo glyphs as an example. That doesn't rule out the English word influencing the choice to call DoCoMo's pictures "emoji", but this blog post (in Japanese) claims that no one associated the "emo" with English "emotion" until after emoji were added to the iPhone and went international, and the first blog comment begins "oh yeah, now that you mention it..." which is further anecdotal evidence that the similarity isn't obvious to Japanese speakers. -- BenRG (talk) 01:16, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine on seeing a text containing rongorongo, one would have to sing "Rongorongorongorongo banana phone" All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:12, 22 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]

Or "Rongorongorongo, I don't want to leave the Congo." 99.235.223.170 (talk) 16:36, 22 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

Based on the history section, it appears emoji did not include emoticons until later. So just a coincidence. Reach Out to the Truth 01:19, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So, the -ji part comes from the root that means "character" (as in Kanji) but then what is the root for the "emo-" part? --Lgriot (talk) 14:28, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵, "picture") + moji (文字, "character"). The apparent resemblance to English "emotion" and "emoticon" is just a coincidence." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, so -moji is for character, but sometimes Japanese uses only -ji as in kanji and romaji. --Lgriot (talk) 14:44, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Since no one has linked it, see the article titled False cognate. Emoji and emoticon are classic examples of false cognates. --Jayron32 02:11, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So, people at the start of their careers are often called this by those promoting them. But when, and if, they do become successful, nobody ever refers to them as "the current big thing" or "the latest big thing" or "the incumbent big thing", or anything else like that. They're called entertainers, singers, actors, whatever - never "big things".

Why do they cease to be "big things" once they actually become, er, big things? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:32, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Because we were into them before anyone else ever heard about them.--Jayron32 01:33, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The phrases "current big thing" and "latest big thing" both get a number of Google hits, some of them linking to speculations about how those concepts differ from the "next big thing" concept. Deor (talk) 11:48, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Really? It never occurred to me to check that. So my premise was wrong. Again. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:06, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Is this anywhere in Unicode, or is it compositable? If not can we do thorn with a dot over it? A later version would be acceptable, even preferable.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:09, 22 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]

I tried searching Unicode here for "thorn" but didn't find anything like "Thorn with e". That leaves your second option of "compositabilty", but I'm not sure that can be done either.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 02:38, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

þͤ (U+00FE U+0364) is probably the right way to do it, but the e may end up in different places depending on the font and rendering library. The combining e has been in Unicode since version 3.2 (2002). -- BenRG (talk) 05:46, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looks right on my system. I didn't know about the "combining e". Thanks for the info. For Mr. Farmbrough's reference, here's a link that also gives the "official" name of the character and its HTML coding.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 06:33, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a compelling reason why this character combination would have to be encoded as thorn with e above? The most common rendering I'm familiar with is simply a superscript "e" after the thorn, i.e. "þ^e", which seems quite sufficient to render the typical medieval English abbreviation. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:23, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, in the sense that this is the way the original was printed. No meaning would be lost even by "ye" or "the", but fidelity is good when it can be achieved. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:55, 22 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]

See diplomatic transcription. I've often spent piles of time looking for this kind of character when doing such transcriptions. Nyttend (talk) 01:24, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I had a quick look at the "Medieval Unicode Font Initiative" [3], which has been working on fonts for these kinds of philological purposes and on recommendations for new Unicode characters for this field. They don't seem to envisage any extra character for this thorn+e combination, so it would seem they deemed either plain þ^e or U+0364 "combining Latin small letter e" sufficient for the purpose (or possibly þᵉ, with U+1D49 "modifier letter small e"?) Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Experimental_Mechanized_Force#Exercises_and_results contains the phrases "firm going" and "rough going". Are these the British English way of saying "smooth terrain" and "rough terrain"? Are these expressions ("firm going" and "rough going") still in common usage? 731Butai (talk) 06:21, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This type of use is very common when talking about race tracks. See Going (horse racing). I don't know if it is a common term in a military context. JMiall₰ 09:55, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) They are borrowings from horse racing which is done on grass over here, so the state of the grass will affect the performance of the horses; some are better able to cope with poor conditions than others. Your interpretation is correct, although sometimes used in a more figurative way; "I found it heavy going" means that a task turned out to be harder work than it ought to have been ("heavy going" = very muddy). Alansplodge (talk) 10:01, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In Detroit, I use "rough going ahead", but never "firm going". StuRat (talk) 23:11, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going" is attributed to Joe Kennedy, so it's not an exclusively English expression. Tevildo (talk) 23:41, 22 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard that expression before, and my understanding was that the "going" refers to the situation and is unrelated to the horseracing term. Our article confirms this. 731Butai (talk) 02:16, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't make sense. In both cases "the going" simply refers to the ability to go. In horse racing it'd be literally going somewhere, in the other expression metaphorical, but that doesn't make it "unrelated", and the article doesn't say it is. (Afterthought: what is different in the horse-racing expression is that the going is described in terms of what the track is like.)

Going_(horse_racing) says "going" refer to the *track* that the horses are racing on, not the fact that the horses are moving.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going says "in context, 'the going' means 'the situation'", as in, if someone says "Nice going!" to you, they meant "You did a good job!", and not "You did a good job because the ground was easy to move upon!".

• That's what I meant by "unrelated".731Butai (talk) 10:25, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes, you're reading it too literally. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 12:55, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For another example of the usage, I've heard traffic reports in Toronto where conditions on a congested road are described as "slow going". In this case, literally. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 08:42, 23 November 2015 (UTC), edited 08:45, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also, "let's go while the going is good" sounds somewhat Irish but it's perfectly cromulent in terms of the above equestrian references. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:45, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I know that phrase well -- just sounds like baby boomer USian to me though :) SemanticMantis (talk) 22:31, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's been around (at least in the "get" version) since at least as far back as 1912. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was edit-conflicted, but I was trying to say that the American version please, not USian, yuck is "get while the getting's good". It's not a Ferengi-type thing; "get" is being used in the sense of "make like a tree and get outta here". --Trovatore (talk) 23:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like "USian" either but I prefer it to implying that the other countries in the Americas don't exist or aren't important. Some of the issues are discussed at American_(word). SemanticMantis (talk) 15:31, 24 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

I prefer "Make like a shepherd and get the flock outta here". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:57, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just in case anyone didn't get Trovatore's malapropism (as originally spoken by Biff Tannen in the original Back to the Future film), the mixed metaphor is a result of two confused jokes "Make like a tree and leave" (using the dual definition of leaf/leave) and "Make like a bald man and get outta here" (using the dual definition of hair/here). --Jayron32 13:36, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And because this is the language desk, we might as well give the horse another good wallop and point out that "leave" here is wikt:leave#Verb 3, "to produce leaves or foliage", which is a usage that I doubt was in either Biff's or Marty's active vocabulary. --Trovatore (talk) 00:24, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This picture and caption come from the Little Chef article, which covers a British restaurant chain. I don't remember hearing this sense of "trading" in en:us ("out of business" would be used in the image caption), and while I'm familiar with it in en:gb, I don't know about other varieties. Does one encounter this sense of "trading" in en:ca, en:au, en:in, en:nz, etc, and if not, how is the same meaning normally expressed in these various national varieties? Nyttend (talk) 01:35, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would also say "has gone out of business" in Canadian English. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Ceased trading" is used in American English, but it has more of a financial and a historical connotation, or it means dealing in a certain product, along the line of this made up example: After the founder died, the company ceased trading in imports from his native Holland and concentrated on the toy lines he had developed in the United States. Ceased trading might be used to mean closed shop as a means of avoiding saying "went out of business" repeatedly, but it's not a common or conversational usage. (I did search for examples of "ceased trading" but the results were decidedly British.) μηδείς (talk) 03:27, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds right; "ceased trading", "is no longer trading", etc. sound like you're talking about New York Stock Exchange brokers when the day's closing bell has just sounded. Aside from financial contexts (see the third sentence of the NYSE article), it seems to require mention of what's being traded, and aside from barter, it seems to be things like Trade (sports) or international trade: definitely not anything that would have its market share threatened by Burger King. Nyttend (talk) 04:29, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Ceased trading" and "Went out of business" are synonyms in NZ. We follow British usage in a great many things, but there are some astonishing differences. A truck is a truck, not a lorry. Footpath, not pavement, is the term for sidewalk. Akld guy (talk) 04:50, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an article on differences between en-gb, en-nz, en-au, en-ca, etc., in the same way as Comparison of American and British English and it's linked-to lists? Bazza (talk) 13:09, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think many British people would say "Oh, did you notice that the Little Chef on the bypass has ceased trading" without sounding like a solicitors clerk. "Gone out of business" or "closed down" would be more usual in common parlance. Alansplodge (talk) 13:44, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As a(nother) Brit, I'm perfectly familiar with the term and might well use it in a business context, though would be less likely to in casual speech. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 15:11, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Alansplodge (talk) 16:42, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The usage is akin to "tradesman".

In US English, "trade" tends to be used to describe "overseas business on a macroeconomic level", "interaction on stock/currency/commodity/etc. exchanges", or exchange of a barter type (trading baseball cards, trading two ore for one wood, etc.). It also appears in some canned expressions "tools of the trade", "tricks of the trade", etc. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is also the grocery chain Trader Joe's and there are various shopping malls by the name of Trader's Lane in places like Williamstown and Ocean City, NJ. These are retail establishments, not financial establishments or engaged in barter. μηδείς (talk) 20:20, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is always possible to find an exception. The chain Trader Joe's uses a self-consciously "old fashioned" but whimsical image of a 19th century sailing merchant or trader as part of its branding. Hence the maritime bells that cashiers ring to summon managers and much of the decoration on their promotional material. This use of trader is not a common one in everyday American English. Marco polo (talk) 21:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have only driven past, never through a Trader Joe's. μηδείς (talk) 18:10, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to the expressions: 'stock in trade' is common in America. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:53, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Lines from the song "For Lovin' Me": I ain't the kind to hang around / With any new love that I've found / Movin' is my stock in trade, I'm movin' on.... ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:00, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A question from a non-native English speaker.

Here is an alleged quote of great jazz musician Charlie Parker: “You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.”

What does the word 'wail' mean in this context? None of the explanations given on wikt:wail seem to be appropriate here.

Thank you! /Pj32na (talk) 18:59, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From the Wiktionary page - verb 5, "To perform with great liveliness and force". Tevildo (talk) 19:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Per Tevildo. The use of wail in this context is related to "wail" as an emotional cry. Parker is advising players to let their emotions come out through the music, rather than to concentrate on the technical aspects. --Jayron32 19:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The first two lines of "Jailhouse Rock": Warden threw a party in the county jail / Prison band was there and they began to wail. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

But remember, you've got to jump, jive, and then you wail. If you wail before jumping and jiving, I'm afraid you're just doing it wrong. --Trovatore (talk) 21:04, 23 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

Thanks Trovatore. Now I have a vicious ear worm. In case anyone missed the reference, I'll post the music video here [4], maybe that will help me purge it :) SemanticMantis (talk) 22:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

Are not the dancers in the video doing the jitterbug rather than the jive sensu strictu? Tevildo (talk) 23:14, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know that these words really have definitions quite that precise. I would call it generally East Coast Swing with lots of aerials. Could also be Lindy Hop, though I didn't see any swingouts, which is sort of the definitional move, but that doesn't mean they weren't there when the camera didn't catch them. There were also some couples mixing in Charleston steps. As for the "jive" article you linked, it claims that East Coast uses straight eighths for its triple steps, which I don't think is true, so I don't know how much credence I'd put in that article (TBH when you're doing fast triple steps, it's really pretty hard to make the distinction anyway, but when they're stepped through slowly in introductory classes, they're usually syncopated). --Trovatore (talk) 00:13, 24 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

And from "Rock and Roll Music": I took my loved one over 'cross the tracks / So she could hear my man a wailin' sax [saxophone]. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:00, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"To wail is to let loose a long loud cry... When it comes to expressing unhappiness, wailing lies at the extreme end of the spectrum — unless you're a jazz musician. In jazz terminology, wailing on one's instrument is actually a good thing." [5]

"Jazz Slang Dictionary - Wail: To play a tune extremely well. Count Basie did a tune called "Prince of Wails" -- a clever play on words. Damn, Basie's band can really wail." [6]

"The Beatnik's Glossary - To wail = to have a good time, to play a tune well" [7]

Actually, I think it originally comes from the sound made by a jazz trumpet. Air raid sirens "wail" too, see Air Raid Sirens Wail In Jerusalem Alansplodge (talk) 22:48, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's a line in Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing": "You got guitar George, he knows all the chords, but it's strictly rhythm, he don't want to make it cry or sing". The idea is that a soloist, playing his instrument expressively, can make it sound like a human voice in a state of high emotion. --Nicknack009 (talk) 13:03, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Without restraint. Bus stop (talk) 13:16, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, on this page: http://www.naturalchild.org/naomi_aldort/manners.html , the sentence of "The parents of these parents must have told them to say 'please' and 'thank you', yet they didn't seem to learn it.", the word learn means to use a habit? À la 雞 (talk) 03:49, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has an article titled Learning, which explains the concept. If English is not your first language, you can find a list of articles on the left side of the article in the small section titled "Languages" which contains Wikipedia articles in other languages. If you can find your native language, perhaps that can help you some. --Jayron32 03:55, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see 4 possibilities. Even though told to so something...

1) They never remembered it to begin with.

2) They later forgot about it.

3) Although they know it, it's not automatic. That is, they have to think about it each time they do it.

4) They choose not to do it.

I would say any of the first 3 cases could be described by saying they didn't "learn" it. #3 relates to whether or not it has become a habit. StuRat (talk) 04:45, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Applying the habit would be evidence of having learned it. —Tamfang (talk) 09:04, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously if you do something regularly you've learned how to do it (like riding a bicycle). But if you don't do it that may simply be evidence that you've learned that doing it is wrong - for example riding your bicycle the wrong way down a one - way street. 78.146.229.66 (talk) 12:23, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are related concepts that fall under related terms. The answer to your question is yes—"the word learn means to use a habit". But the word learn would also mean to acquire a habit. One can "learn" something in theory and one can learn something in practice. If one does something by rote, obviously one has "learned" to do that thing. If one knows perfectly well to do something but nevertheless chooses not to do it—one still has "learned" it. One has simply chosen not to apply what one has learned! Bus stop (talk) 12:49, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This online encyclopedia about Estonia informs me that Those who made an effort to mimic some other nationality in their speech and way of life were accused by Estonians not so long ago of being "juniper Germans", "willow Russians" or "brushwood Englishmen". Why junipers? Willows? Brushwood? I don't get the joke. --Edith Wahr (talk) 12:03, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Could this be in the same vein as calling somebody a "backwoodsman?" 78.146.229.66 (talk)

Regarding the juniper Germans: "The name of juniper (the plant in the genus Juniperus) is kadakas in Estonian. In the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century a similar noun kadakas and the compound kadaka/saks (saks ‘squire, vulg. German’) or kadaka/sakslane (sakslane ‘German’) were used for Estonians who tried to look like Germans and spoke (usually incorrect) German (EMS II: 453). Although folk etymology would associate the Estonian words kadakasaks, kadakasakslane, kadakas ‘(half-) Germanized Estonian’ with ‘juniper’, the disdainful words have nothing to do with the tree. Instead, it is a loanword borrowed from the German compound word Katensaße ‘slum dweller, craftsman’ (< Kate ‘hut, shanty’ + Saße ‘place of residence’), which has been folk-etymologically modified to sound like certain familiar words (Saari 2004: 119–120)." From a Dialect Dictionary to an Etymological One by Vilja Oja and Iris Metsmägi, Institute of the Estonian Language) ---Sluzzelin talk 12:38, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ah, thank you, very interesting. A gbooks search for "Katensasse" and, even better, "Wacholderdeutsche" yields some more clues. But what with the "willow Russians"? --Edith Wahr (talk) 13:15, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't able to find anything. The Estonian word for willow is paju which sounds a bit like "(Я) пою", Russian for "(I) sing". But that didn't lead me anywhere either. As for the brushwood English, I couldn't even find which Estonian word might be meant here. (I don't know Estonian at all). ---Sluzzelin talk 13:25, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

there is an Estonian Version of the article, which has pajuvenelasteks and võsainglasteks (which I presume is not the nominative form, I don't know Estonian either, just some Finnish, which doesn't get me far here). --Edith Wahr (talk) 13:31, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have asked for help at WikiProject Estonia. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:58, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Walking through Liverpool Street Station this morning I heard the automated announcer calling "The midnight 33 train to Chingford". I didn't check the indicator board but presumably this train would have been gazetted as the "00:33", same as in the timetable. Has anyone else come across this construction? 78.146.229.66 (talk) 12:15, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

US East Coast: Never. But, of course, the US is pretty rigorous in using the 12-hour clock for civil purposes. I've never seen a (civil) US train or bus schedule printed in 24-hour time; that train would have been gazetted here as the "12:33". So that train would really always be called the "twelve thirty-three", whether just past noon or just past midnight. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:55, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Gazetted" ? Does that mean "posted" ? Certainly not a word used much here in the US. Is it widely used in UK English ? StuRat (talk) 19:05, 24 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

How would have expected "00:33" to be pronounced? All the options sound odd to me. Nought-nought 33? Oh Oh 33? Zero zero 33? /Coffeeshivers (talk) 17:33, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Formal R/T usage would be ZERO-ZERO-TREE-TREE - see NATO phonetic alphabet#Digits. I'd personally say "Oh-oh thirty-three" (when "twenty five to one" would be insufficiently precise), and presumably Network Rail have their own standards on how to say the time. Tevildo (talk) 18:27, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not the OP but I would have expected "twelve 33" in the UK. As an announcement in the middle of the night, this is not ambiguous. But otherwise "oh 33", copying "one 33" for 01:33 --Lgriot (talk) 18:46, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

But coming between the "twenty-three thirty-three" and the "one thirty-three" services, it might sound odd. Smurrayinchester 10:57, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Zero Dark Thirty-Three ? :-) StuRat (talk) 19:09, 24 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

Western US and I have never heard a construction like "midnight 33" or "noon 33". I would use "33 (minutes) past/after midnight". --Amble (talk) 19:23, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A search for midnight thirty shows many hits from both sides of the pond, but I wouldn't regard it as standard in the UK.

Gazetted is not a word that I would ever use, but it is a British term for an official announcement, going back, I think, to the colonial army. Dbfirs 21:39, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See Gazette#Gazette as a verb. I've not encountered this particular railway use of the term before, but here's another example. Tevildo (talk) 23:47, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• To avoid confusion in train timetables (for example, with day tickets), a train which starts before midnight but runs overnight will sometimes have the post-midnight times marked as "24:xx" (this is the standard in the automated General Transit Feed Specification, for example). Although you don't see this much in the UK, perhaps it's the same kind of thinking. Smurrayinchester 10:57, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• When the Canadian Pacific Railway first opened, its two western divisions used the 24-hour clock while its two eastern divisions used the 12-hour clock. In the 1974 book Van Horne's Road by Omer Lavallée, on page 259 a pair of the timetables showing its the CPR's first transcontinental passenger train service, in 1886, are shown. These were obviously produced by staff in two different offices. One timetable shows the westbound Pacific Express as far as Port Arthur, arriving there at "4 00 PM" (this would be Eastern Standard Time, but it is not explicit). The other, showing the rest of the trip, shows the same train, now identified as No. 1, departing Port Arthur at "15.10" Central Standard Time. Anyway, that night that train stops at Vermilion Bay at "24.58" and then at Gilbert at "1.17". Similarly, the following night it stops at Pense at "24.45" and then at Pasqua at "1.30", Mountain Standard Time; the night after that, at Radnor at "24.31" (if necessary), followed by Morley at "1.00"; and the next night, Pennys at "24.55" followed by Ashcroft at "1.43", Pacific Standard Time. Clearly someone in authority at the CPR in 1886 found it abhorrent to start a time with the digit 0, even if this meant that the hour number did not restart with the new day but instead one hour later. Perhaps "midnight 33" is an example of the same feeling in 2015. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 12:33, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The anniversary page mentions "sestercentennial" and "sesquarcentennial" as names for the 250th and 350th anniversaries. How would you name the 450th anniversary using the same rules used for coining these terms?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:04, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It appears "sesquincentennial" is in use in some places: for example. This is often confused with the 150th anniversary of "sesquicentennial" as they differ only by a letter. (note comparisons of -quin- for five with above: -ter- for three and -quar- for four). --Jayron32 17:08, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Has this been released in the US in theater yet? Why is there basically no information on Wikipedia about it?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 03:20, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, it hasn't, see [8]. Many, many films don't get general release but are only shown at film festivals. In answer to your second question, because no-one has made a page about it yet. --Viennese Waltz 07:08, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've just started a bit of native speaker's cleanup of the page here for the Alexandrov Ensemble, formerly known in brief as the Red Army Choir. In Alexandrov Ensemble#The renaming of the Ensemble we have the inelegant phrasing "Twice Red-bannered and Red-starred ..." I've a healthy respect for foreign entities' own English-language translations of their particular nomenclature, certainly in treating a former Soviet institution. So if this wording or another is "the official" or otherwise canonical form used in English by the Ensemble, I'd leave it in peace, adding a line to Talk:Alexandrov Ensemble#Names. (N.B. see the suggested "two times" for "twice.") . However, I'm unable to check it. The multilingual "European Homepage" in External links is broken, as is the .ru Official Home Page "Contact Us" feature (!). Meanwhile I'm leaving a message in the Guest Book of the "Unofficial Blog of the Alexandrov Ensemble of the Red Army". Perhaps in the interim there's another information channel I've overlooked? -- Cheers, Deborahjay (talk) 08:30, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Amazon use the translation A. V. Alexandrov Twice Red-bannered and Red-starred Academic Ensemble of Song and Dance of the Soviet Army, if that's any help. I believe from previous discussions here that the "... named after A V Alexandrov" construction may be over-literal. Tevildo (talk) 11:17, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]