For editors who are bilingual in Spanish and English or otherwise have very good Spanish, please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Law#Would_this_person.27s_death_be_considered_a_.22homicide.22.3F_.28Cross-wiki_issues.29 which is a discussion on whether an incident in which an American girl who had killed someone (and was convicted of aggravated assault but not of homicide) should be described as a "homicide". It involves an article on the Spanish Wikipedia but I am posting the question on EN to get feedback in relation to the United States legal system. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:47, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Any killing of one human by another can be called "homicide". The legal culpability for a homicide will vary from state to state. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:24, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have answered the question at the target discussion. μηδείς (talk) 05:35, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Per Bugs, there are very few Federal laws dealing with homicide. Crime and punishment have historically been held to be state's matters, so each state has its own codes for dealing with these issues. There is no "In the U.S...." way to answer the question. All questions regarding laws in the U.S. should generally be phrased as "In the U.S. state of..." One would think that Federalism in the United States would cover this relationship, but it's sadly lacking in general principles, and really provides more of a historical perspective.--Jayron32 14:50, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In any event, "homicide" is a general descriptive, but not usually a criminal charge. The words used for the crime of taking another life are usually manslaughter or murder. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:57, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. In many jurisdictions, coroners often rule deaths as "homicide", meaning merely that the death was due to the intentional act of another person, regardless of that person's legal culpability for murder, manslaughter, or any other crime. Nyttend (talk) 18:34, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but this is in English. There is no crime called "homicide" in any Anglo-American jurisdiction I'm aware of (though there is criminally negligent homicide in some jurisdictions). In Spanish-speaking countries, I think, there is often a specific crime called homicidio, and it may be problematic to distinguish the crime from the purely descriptive fact of the death of a person caused by another person (even when there is no criminal liability). --Trovatore (talk) 18:40, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, Nyttend, I don't think "homicide" in English has to be the result of an intentional act. If you kill someone by pure misadventure, I think that is still homicide. --Trovatore (talk) 18:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't that be death by misadventure, or even death by accident? Nyttend (talk) 18:48, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, here we might need to distinguish between the term used as technical language by coroners, and the meaning of the English word. I think in English, if you kill someone, that's homicide. Even if it was purely by accident, and you were in no way negligent. --Trovatore (talk) 18:54, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Since people have broadened this to other English-speaking countries, I'll note that section 222 of the Criminal Code of Canada explicitly defines: "A person commits homicide when, directly or indirectly, by any means, he causes the death of a human being." This is even broader than Bugs and Trovatore have been saying, because it includes suicide. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 19:19, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I'll point out that homicide is a coroner's ruling for the cause of death under common law systems, and is not in itself a criminal charge. But the OP really isn't asking for the niceties and variations of usage in English dialects and jurisdictions. Rather, WhisperToMe has asked how the term killer should be translated from the English into Spanish for use in the Spanish article. The various words in English and Spanish do not overlap perfectly. The answer there is that killer in the neutral stipulated sense of this case would be translated as la homicida, not la matadora. μηδείς (talk) 23:57, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Medeis:, is this because she is not killing bulls. See matador. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 08:15, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Check out the origin of matador.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:52, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is it reasonable to use the term "hapax legomenon" when we're dealing solely with a collection of names? I've just expanded the intro of List of townships in Ohio, including adding "...there are 618 different names used by townships statewide, including 451 names used only once. On the opposite end of the spectrum, forty-three townships are named "Washington", and eight other names are used for twenty or more townships each". Distribution generally appears to follow the concepts mentioned in the hapax article's lead, although it fails to follow Zipf's law because the five most common names are used 43, 35, 27, 25, and 25 times each. In particular, because names were assigned at the whims of the namers, rather than being used with specific meanings (in most cases, there was no reason that "Washington Township" couldn't instead have been named "Adams Township", for example) as with normal vocabulary terms, I'm left wondering whether the hapax concept is really applicable to a collection of names. Nyttend (talk) 18:40, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The criterion for being a "hapax legomenon" is normally taken to be how often a word has actually been recorded (in the written record preserved), not how many things it has been used for, so I'd say it doesn't really quite fit here (evidently, each name, even if used for only one place, will have been uttered and written by multiple people on multiple occasions, in multiple known texts.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:49, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your answer until the long parenthetical phrase; I can't understand how that fits with the concept of a single text's hapax legomena. For example, "matrimonial" isn't anywhere close to being a hapax legomenon, but it is a hapax legomenon in Moby-Dick. I'm trying to discover whether it's reasonable to say that the uniquely named townships are hapax legomena within the collection of Ohio townships. Nyttend (talk) 18:54, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see what you mean now – if you take the term as restricted to the context of studying a single text "corpus", and if you take that Ohio collection as such a corpus, then I guess you could get away with it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:22, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm no academic expert here, but I'd guess the concept doesn't apply here, for the following two reasons (at least):

• 618 isn't really a statistically meaningful base for this type of analysis
• the "whims" you describe above were clearly not entirely random. There was no reason that "Washington Township" couldn't have been "Adams Township", perhaps, but there was every reason that "Washington Township" wasn't "Adams Township".

So while I can't say that you can't apply the term to this case, I think it's highly misleading to do so. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:26, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll agree, @Nyttend:, with the negative opinions above. The term hapax legomenon is only used for words that appear only once in the Bible or other classical texts. Given any list of Ohio townships will be widely disseminated and the uniquely named townships will be named in innumerable documents, the concept as normally conceived simply does not apply. BTW, there are six Washington Townships in NJ, and even Governor Christie has been unable to rectify this. μηδείς (talk) 05:11, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The point of 618 or 451 among 1310 (or whatever the total number is) makes sense; thank you. However, it would be appreciated if you didn't waste everyone's time with outright wrong answers. (1) In many cases, several townships were formed at the same time, and many or all would be named for famous individuals, without any reason for assigning a name to one spot on the map instead of another. (2) Moby-Dick is not a classical text by any stretch of the imagination. Nyttend (talk) 05:17, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

While I realize that this page is no substitute for AfD, its denizens (you) do seem interested in, and often informed about, quirks of language use. And so: If "shit happens" is encyclopedic, I invite the addition of evidence for this in the article (!) "Shit happens". -- Hoary (talk) 22:37, 13 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't put that much effort into it, but I think I've significantly improved it ... and yet the result still seems utterly unnoteworthy. Over to somebody(es) among youse. -- Hoary (talk) 04:29, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If the nonsense called the "santorum" is noteworthy, then this much-more-broadly-used expression certainly is. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:32, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're using 'noteworthy' in the everyday sense, not the Wikipedia sense. One of the two terms has had extensive third-party coverage and commentary, the other has not and should probably be deleted. 99.235.223.170 (talk) 14:03, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That "santorum" thing is only known in certain political circles, and it has no encyclopedic value. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:09, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You linked to the article, so I assume you're capable of finding the references section: Slate, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, CNN, ABC News, etc, etc. are all in there. That's not indicative of something "...only known in certain political circles..." I've already linked the notability guidelines for you, but perhaps WP:DONTLIKEIT would be more germane? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.235.223.170 (talk) 18:59, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's not inherently a vulgarism, so they could talk about it without saying too much. The G-rated version of this one is "stuff happens", and here's a random example from the NYT.[2] I am confident that you will find such references far more widespread than the cultish term "santorum". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:26, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an article from 12 years ago talking about various attempts to curb the bumper stickers which have been around since at least the early 1990s.[3] In contrast, you could have a "Santorum" bumper sticker and most observers would assume that's your favorite Republican presidential candidate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:33, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It does seem to me that the "G-rated version" has more signs of significance, what with "Rumsfeld on looting in Iraq: 'Stuff happens'" (which gave rise to Stuff Happens), "Jeb Bush says 'stuff happens' in response to gun violence", and perhaps more besides. (Incidentally, "santorum happens" is a thing -- though an extremely minor one.) The mention of "shit happens" in the firstamendmentcenter.org page is promising, but I'm a legal ignoramus and therefore very reluctant to attempt a paraphrase of any legal discussion. Somebody better equipped than I am and interested in adding it should also see this. -- Hoary (talk) 22:47, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why does the first word of this sentence ("why") sound like its last letter ("y")? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:53, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Some people pronounce the word "why" and the letter "Y" differently ("why" can be pronounced with a voiceless labialized velar approximant too, something like "hwye"). We have an article on pronunciation of English ⟨wh⟩. As for why the letter 'Y' is named "wye", our subsection on the etymology of letter names only writes: "wye, of obscure origin but with an antecedent in Old French wi" ---Sluzzelin talk 01:08, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

When speaking carefully, the "wh" part is enunciated. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:32, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, when some people are speaking carefully. Others consider the that the H is just silent. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 11:27, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe a regional thing and/or a function of education level. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:18, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Does it matter what sound precedes it, like how "cool" changes "whip"? Or is that just for show? InedibleHulk (talk) 05:34, November 14, 2015 (UTC)

Speaking of self-referential, I just accidentally discovered that the word "a" sounds exactly like its first and last letter. Maybe even the middle letter. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:39, November 14, 2015 (UTC)

No, actually, it doesn't—usually. Usually the article "a" is just a schwa. Even when they use an emphasized pronunciation, some people use a short A as in "cat", others a long A like the name of the letter. See. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 11:27, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, hadn't considered other people's habits. Thanks for the reminder. "I" is still universal, as far as I recall. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:24, November 15, 2015 (UTC)

Also, I. Doesn't even matter which dialect you use. InedibleHulk (talk) 09:40, November 14, 2015 (UTC)

I heard/read somewhere or other that Y was called ui because it looks like those two letters stacked; this naturally became /wai/ in the Great Vowel Shift. Could be a Just So Story. —Tamfang (talk) 07:47, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean the Great Vowel Shift? And does an italicized "thuh" become "thee" in everyone else's head? InedibleHulk (talk) 08:38, November 15, 2015 (UTC)

"Northern /eː øː/ were raised to /iː, yː/ (and later /yː/ was unrounded to /iː/), and Southern /eː oː/ were raised to /iː uː/. But in Southern English, both the front and back close vowels /iː uː/ were diphthongized, while in Northern English /iː/ diphthongized, but /uː/ did not."

Just quoting Wikipedia, not sure what it means. Seems relevant. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:46, November 15, 2015 (UTC)

• I was just going to ignore this, but, to answer @InedibleHulk:'s question, [ðɘ] (in my dialect, [ðɨ]) appears before consonants, and [ði] before vowels. "Thih book" vs "thee earthquake". μηδείς (talk) 01:06, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that there is a discrepancy between how some large Sino-Korean numbers are pronounced as opposed to how they are written. One area where this seems to be the case is with years - for example, the year 1988 would be pronounced as if it were written "千九百八十八," but when it is written in Hanja, it is written as "一九八八," just like how it is written in the Chinese language. Is it true that such a discrepancy exists here? 173.52.207.169 (talk) 07:14, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The year could be written in various ways in Hanja. Here's an example with just the digits, 一九五0年: [4]. Here's an example written out in full, 一千九百二十一年: [5]. You could also write the year either way in Hangeul: 일구구팔년 vs. 천구백구십구년. I'd say the shorter form in Hanja, like 一九八八, is equivalent to writing the date in numerals, 1988. --Amble (talk) 00:18, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why doesn't the French flag's name, The Tricolore use the usual word for "color" in French as in couleur? Thanks in advance, Manytexts (talk) 11:35, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's a "three-coloured" flag rather than a "three-colour" flag. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:22, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As implied above "tricolore" is an adjective, not a noun. The full phrase is "le drapeau tricolore", not "le drapeau aux trois couleurs". Other adjectives using "-colore" are unicolore, bicolore, multicolore. --Cfmarenostrum (talk) 13:15, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To expand a bit: the English verb "to color/colour" is colorer in French, and if you merely wished to say "colored/coloured" in French it would be coloré with an acute accent at the end (colorée in the feminine), not "colore", though there are antonyms with both spellings: incolore (without color, colorless) and incoloré (uncolored).

All this does not answer why the adjective and verb are closer to Latin than the noun "couleur". Here are CNTRL's entries on the etymology and history of couleur, colorer, tricolore, and incolore, . ---Sluzzelin talk 14:13, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Incolore and incoloré are paronyms - words with similar spelling or pronunciation but different or close meanings. Antonyms are words with opposite meanings.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:23, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I meant (various possible) antonyms of -colore/ coloré. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:28, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The reason is simple: couleur has been a colloquial word (hence its Old French form), while colorer and -colore are later borrowings from Latin.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:25, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're an amazing bunch. Thanks for your perfect answers that take my French rudiments up many notches. Manytexts (talk) 23:17, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The phenomenon, Manytexts, to which Ljuboslov refers, is doublet (linguistics). μηδείς (talk) 18:29, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Déjà vu: I asked exactly the same question earlier this year, but the answer was a bit more detailed this time around :-) Alansplodge (talk) 01:14, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Doublet is a cool link, thank you. And it is worth reading your Q&A Alansplodge because –lore also looked Italian to me. So much to learn. Merci. Manytexts (talk) 08:22, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Several questions:

• Should that sentence have a sentence between "Kobe" and "taking"?
• Is the sentence without a comma correct, as far as normal conversational English is concerned, or is it downright wrong?
• Is the sentence with a comma "more correct" than the one without, or they're just the same?
• What do you call this type of... sentence/clause/something?

Thanks! –HTD 20:07, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe your first question was "Should that sentence have a sentence comma between "Kobe" and "taking"?"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:31, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

LOL yes. –HTD 05:00, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comma or no comma, fine with me. The taking... is a participle modifying the head noun Kobe. —Tamfang (talk) 07:51, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So what's the verb? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:43, 15 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]

's --ColinFine (talk) 00:19, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify a bit, the contraction "It's" is short for "it is". In this case, the 's standing for "is", which is a type of verb called a copula. --Jayron32 13:03, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So let me get this straight: With or without the comma, it doesn't matter? Neither version is "more correct" than the other? –HTD 17:40, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It sort of depends on how you speak the sentence. A dependent clause (the part that says "taking over for Lebron") can be set aside by commas, by conjunctions, or by nothing in particular. In the case of many dependent clauses, the conjoining word is omitted, see here for an explanation. --Jayron32 17:49, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)"Technically correct" might depend on whether "taking over for LeBron" is restrictive or not. I'd guess it's usually not, meaning a comma would be appropriate. In everyday, spoken English, would there be a slight pause representing a comma? Probably depends on the speaker. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:59, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is what I had thought, re: if you'd pause if you're talking aloud the sentence. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.

I guess the question would now be, if you'd put this sentence in isolation, would a comma had been necessary? For example, Kobe himself said "It's Kobe taking over for LeBron," then, the next sentence immediately follows. Does the second sentence have anything to do with the existence of the comma? Or does Kobe saying it have any bearing on whether the comma exists or not? –HTD 18:22, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You'd want the comma for something like:

Who's the new guy in the remake of Ten Tall Men? It's Kobe, taking over for LeBron. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:08, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Are there alternatives interpretation about the place where Holden Caulfield is, when he's telling the story? It's difficult to dispute that it's sort of institution, but is there any evidence that it has to be a hospital? Or even a psychiatric hospital? Where other options back then as to where to place troubled teens?--Scicurious (talk) 18:57, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There were no "troubled" people back then. There were "juvenile delinquents", though. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:38, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes, but wouldn't they just use more direct methods of dealing with 'juvenile delinquents'? In my mind, psychiatric hospitals back then were for people really out of their minds. Average cases were not diagnosed as mental illnesses so easily, contrary to today. --Scicurious (talk) 23:03, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Actually it was easier to be committed back then - less effective drugs, worse diagnosis criteria, more need for unpaid labor provided by "patients", different social standards. Rmhermen (talk) 04:50, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. People could be institutionalized then for things they would never be institutionalized for today, like homosexuality, autism spectrum disorders, etc. StuRat (talk) 04:59, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In Holden's day, there was pretty much just mania and depression. The only real question was "Are you happy?" No? Have some electricity. Yes? Have some laudanum. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:26, November 16, 2015 (UTC)

I think it depended how much money you had - to some extent it still does of course. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:42, 15 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]

I've never read the book, but from the question, the term Reform school comes to mind. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:31, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some enotes on the matter. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:28, November 16, 2015 (UTC)

I've just become convinced he was in this haunted sanitarium. But that doesn't mean it's true. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:32, November 16, 2015 (UTC)

Does any have, or can they locate, a copy of (now withdrawn) ISO 639 Part 6? It's a more extensive table of language codes that might be useful. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:45, 15 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]

According to Peter Constable, "While ISO 639-6 did get approved and published, the code table for 639-6 has never been made fully available in a usable manner. What data has been available has been looked at by lots of people with a response that they don't find it particularly useful for any practical application. Moreover, the agency that was designated as registration authority appears to have ceased its operations." I'm not sure what was in the published standard, but apparently it didn't include the table. -- BenRG (talk) 02:27, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A free preview of ISO 639-6 which includes the table of contents is available here. It looks like it doesn't contain any language codes except a couple of pages of non-normative "example data". -- BenRG (talk) 02:35, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

An old book I have which refers to the physicist Max Wien, refers to him as "Hrn. Geheimrat M. Wien", which translates lierally as "Councillor Mister M Wien" or "Privy Councillor M Wien". I don't think Wien had any role in government (a privy councillor is an advisor to government, a councillor is someone who serves on the board of a local government), but he did run the Physics Department at Jena University for many years.

What does "Geheimrat" actually mean in this context? Is there a rough equivalent in the English speaking university world? Consultant? Advisor (as in thesis advisor / professor)? Does it mean he was on the governing council (ie Senate) of Jena University? 120.145.163.144 (talk) 12:53, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

this discussion is unhelpful to the OP in answering the question. Wikipedia has an article titled Geheimrat. --Jayron32 22:31, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
See the Wikipedia article titled Geheimrat, to wit "With the Empire's dissolution and the rise of Constitutionalism in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the office of a Geheimrat became an honorific title conferred by the German states upon high officials, accompanied by the address Exzellenz. During that period related titles no longer affiliated with an office arose, like (German) Geheimer Kommerzienrat, an award for outstanding contributions in the field of commerce and industry, or (German) Geheimer Medizinalrat, an award for outstanding contributions to medicine." That is, after the fall of the HRE, the term "Geheimrat" came to be an honorary title in Germany, not unlike "Honorary Knighthood" as it is applied today in the UK (that is, one is Knighted not because one will be a military officer in service to the King, as was the original meaning). --Jayron32 13:00, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] Not sure about that last bit, Jayron. The link between knighthoods and military service is essentially a thing of ancient history. Knighthoods are awarded for various reasons, military service being but one of them. Some awards are still classified into Military Division and General Division, but neither is superior to the other. To qualify for a substantive knighthood, one must be a citizen of one of the 16 countries of which the Queen is head of state (see Commonwealth realm). People who do not hold such a citizenship may be awarded honorary knighthoods. They are permitted to use any relevant postnominal letters that come with the knighthood (typically but not exclusively KBE), but are not allowed to use the pre-nominal style "Sir". Same is true for honorary damehoods and the use of DBE but not "Dame". -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:56, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] I'm afraid, then, that you're going to have to take out your sources which disagree with that and fix the Wikipedia article titled "Knight" in several places. Based on sources cited in that article, the following cited sentences appear. "Historically, in Europe, knighthood has been conferred upon mounted warriors." That has a source. If you have sources which say that say that historically Knights were NOT military positions (or, conversely, since that statement doesn't use the word "military", that a "warrior" is somehow different from "military"), please fix the Wikipedia article so it is correct. Also, later in the same article, again with sources, the entire section titled "Carolingian Age" seems to discuss Knights in a military context. Since you are disagreeing with my statement that Knights were historically a military position, you're going to have to find sources that disagree with that and fix the Wikipedia article. --Jayron32 12:52, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] Jayron, the key word is 'historically'. Jack of Oz was actually in agreement with you on the historical aspect. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what an honorary knighthood is and who it is awarded to. Please read again slowly and carefully what Jack of Oz wrote. Akld guy (talk) 20:13, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] (ec) Please reread what I wrote: The link between knighthoods and military service is essentially a thing of ancient history. That acknowledges that, once upon a time, knighthoods were given for military service and nothing else. That is totally consistent with what our article says. What I'm saying is that the system of knighthoods has evolved since that time, and now any citizen can be knighted if their activities in whatever field of endeavour they are engaged in are considered to warrant such an honour. The distinction between substantive and honorary knighthoods has nothing whatever to do with whether the recipient is a member of the military or not; it has everything to do with the citizenship of the recipient. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:16, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] So, you state the exact same thing as I did, and then tell me I'm wrong. I am still perplexed by that. All I stated was that the UK grants knighthoods to honor people today; though in the past it meant something different (that a Knight was a military rank with military rights and obligations). Which of those facts: a) that today knighthoods are given to honor someone, or that b) in the past (the past meaning "not today, but undefined time before today") they were military ranks, is wrong? I am still thoroughly confused by which of those two senses (the only two things one can read in my sentence which you have now twice vehemently objected to) are wrong? Is it the fact that modern Knighthoods honor people, or the fact that ancient Knighthoods were granted in regards to military service? You don't appear to consider either fact wrong. --Jayron32 21:30, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] What I objected to was this statement by you, "not unlike "Honorary Knighthood" as it is applied today in the UK (that is, one is Knighted not because one will be a military officer in service to the King, as was the original meaning)." That showed that you thought that honorary knighthoods are in recent times reserved for non-military people, which is just plain wrong. Honorary knighthoods are conferred on those who are otherwise ineligible, specifically foreigners, and has nothing whatsoever to do with military status. You were just plain wrong. Akld guy (talk) 22:09, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] The UK does not grant Knighthoods to honor people? --Jayron32 22:22, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] Of course it does. But if you're familiar with the term "Honorary", you'll know it means in this context, as Akld guy says, an honour for someone who does not technically qualify for it. It doesn't just refer, blanket-like, to any honour. Would you say that an American recipient of a Congressional Medal of Honor is an "honorary recipient", or a "recipient" without any qualifications? Surely the latter. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:41, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] Look, never mind. I don't understand the objection to my statement that the UK grants knighthoods as a form of honor on a person. Regardless, I'm OK with being wrong. I don't need to be correct here. I am collapsing this because it is unhelpful to answering the question. --Jayron32 22:31, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] Looks like Jack was triggered (can one still say that?) by the phrase "'Honorary Knighthood' as it is applied today in the UK", which has a definite meaning distinct from what you said: a non-military Sir John is not an honorary knight as that term is applied today in the UK. —Tamfang (talk) 20:20, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] The special penance reserved for the benighted souls of Ref Desk Purgatory is its vast and never-ending minefield of triggers. Only when one has learned to nimbly side-step them all may one ascend to a higher plane of consciousness. How long, Lord? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:35, 17 November 2015 (UTC) [reply] ...as it is applied today in the UK. And in New Zealand, Australia, and other realms where the British monarch is head of state. Akld guy (talk) 21:22, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply] (A little piece of trivia, since this is the language desk: The word Geheimrat is preserved in contemporary vocabulary by means of the compound word "Geheimratsecken", (literally Geheimrat's edges/corners/angles) for a receding hairline (related: widow's peak) . ---Sluzzelin talk 21:31, 17 November 2015 (UTC))[reply]

Nobody seems to be completely correct. The word "honorary" in its normal sense means "unpaid", as in "honorary treasurer". 86.149.14.226 (talk) 12:16, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

86.149, that's an irrelevancy. Let me spell it out. Knighthoods are conferred on deserving citizens in countries where the British monarch is head of state. A non-citizen (that is, a foreigner) who is deemed to be deserving because of their contribution to benefitting the country may be awarded an honorary knighthood. This distinction in terminology is so well understood by those of us (such as Jack of Oz and I) who live in countries where knighthoods are conferred, that it took some time to figure out that Jayron was labouring under a misconception, and then convince him that he was. Akld guy (talk) 19:40, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Do we have an article on how Koine texts, e.g. liturgical texts, are pronounced by modern Greek speakers? More specifically, I'm looking at Phos Hilaron#Greek and wondering whether the rules for nasal + stop apply across a word boundary. I know that the ντ of ἐλθόντες and ἰδόντες is pronounced /nd/, but what about ὑμνοῦμεν Πατέρα, Υἱόν καὶ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα and ἐν πᾶσι? Is there nasal assimilation and voicing here? Are these pronounced with /np, nk/ or with /mp, ŋk/ or with /mb, ŋɡ/ or what? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:58, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You can see and hear a reading of the "Koine Greek New Testament" on YouTube.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:29, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just search Φῶς Ἱλαρόν in Youtube. I've heard only /em‿ˈpasi/. The other combinations are either with /-n/ or zero.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:39, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I found it on YouTube. I'm surprised I didn't think of that myself. Thanks for your help! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's just because I listen to Greek music sometimes, so it was my first thought to find the hymn and hear it myself.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:56, 16 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt they would say "Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale" every time they want to refer to the organization. Do they refer to it by letters (like English speakers and "CIA"), or do they treat "GIGN" as a word (like English speakers and "NASA")? 173.79.20.33 (talk) 15:25, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly, Acronym#Non-English languages doesn't cover French. Maybe if you check the requisite articles at fr.wikipedia it may help? --Jayron32 16:01, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We refer to it by letters, we say "GIGN" like English speakers say "CIA". We don't treat it as a word. Akseli9 (talk) 17:50, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure we're all disappointed to learn that you don't say le Gigne. —Tamfang (talk) 20:21, 17 November 2015 (UTC) [reply]

or "la Guigne"...:-) Akseli9 (talk) 20:26, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Like let's say a person makes blogs or is someone famous/semi-famous. They can receive praise and adulation from fans, but they won't respond to those messages/letters/tweets. But if they receive negative attention/criticism/insults, they will respond or engage that person. Is there a word for this or a psychological condition? ScienceApe (talk) 15:55, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure it's a psychological (as in medical), but the general description of someone who only sees the negative in others or themselves or in life can be described as a misanthrope or a pessimist or a cynic. If you use a thesaurus for those terms, you may lead yourself to other similar terms. --Jayron32 18:42, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How come "in" can be used as a preposition by itself but "out", except in the sense "through", cannot?? In other words we say "in the water", but "out of the water". Georgia guy (talk) 15:58, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Except it can. See definition 3 here. I can look out the window, for example. --http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/out here]Jayron32 16:07, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, the Merriam page shows "out" only as an adverb. "Out the window" is not accepted as good English. ----Ehrenkater (talk) 16:33, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Scroll down that page to ³out, the prepositional use. Deor (talk) 16:37, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Whose good English? "He walked out the door" is perfectly cromulent, and Merriam Webster, definition 3, already cited above, notes it as such. Are you claiming the dictionary writers are incorrect? What about Oxford, which notes the preposition use, and gives the example "out the door", seen here. --Jayron32 17:57, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll agree "the bird flew out the window" with Jayron32, and mention that "He out the house" is rather typical for black American English. μηδείς (talk) 18:21, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The last one, however, is a component of AAVE known as copula dropping, where the verb "is" is implied rather than stated. --Jayron32 18:38, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The dropping of the copula is not at issue here; the dropping of of is. —Tamfang (talk) 20:23, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with both Jayron and Tamfang. μηδείς (talk) 02:17, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Tamfang: It depends on if "of" is being dropped or not. The issue is whether one considers the antonymic pairs like "in/out" and "into/out of" and finds ways the usage overlaps. "I went in the door" and "I went out the door" are perfectly matched in meaning and sense and usage of "in" and "out" in the same way that "I went into the house" and "I went out of the house" are in their pairings. As English is imperfect, however, there's not always a direct connection between proper and comfortable English usage and systematic and ordered rules. Thus, what's really probably being dropped here is the "to" portion of "into". Because the sense of entering/exiting a space exists in "into" and "out of", while the sense of transiting a portal exists in the sense of "in" and "out". Consider the difference in sense between "He walked in the door" (meaning he passed the space defined by the doorway) versus "He walked into the door" (meaning he smashed his face into the object, because he moved as though he could enter the space occupied by the door). The thing is, English can often drop the "to" from "into" and not lose meaning. So I can say "He walked in the house" and it means the same thing to a native English speaker as "He walked into the house" (compare to the way that it doesn't work with "door"). Now, compare the same swapping with "out" and "out of" and it doesn't work: "I went out of the house" is NOT interchangeable as "I went out the house" in standard forms of English; the second seems awkward. But "He threw the ball out of the window" and "He threw the ball out the window" both work equally well. The whole point is that, yes, if English worked like a perfectly organized system, with no inconsistency, these problems wouldn't exist. English doesn't. It's messy, and has lots of "just because" rules for how it works. So, we have an imperfect way that the usage of "in" and "out" compare with each other, sometimes acting as prepositions or adverbs where the other word does not work as well. What are you gonna do? It is what it is. --Jayron32 02:54, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"He walked in the house" may mean the same to a US person as "He walked into the house", but there are other countries containing native English speakers who find the former construction abominable and don't use it. Does it mean he entered the house through a door or does it mean he walked around inside the house? The meaning is usually clear from the context, but please do not imply that all native English speakers find the construction acceptable. Equally abominable is "He fell in the water". I'm sorry, but lazy US customs do not make for English that is acceptable everywhere. Please do not presume to speak for all native speakers of English based on what may be acceptable in the US. Akld guy (talk) 06:37, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Abominable" - that's for snowmen. Don't you mean "abominal"? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 08:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is that 1.meant to be funny, or 2.is your comprehension of English really that bad, or 3.are you deceitfully suggesting that I made a mistake so as to impress upon the unwitting that my point was worthless? I think it's no.3 and you speak with forked tongue. Akld guy (talk) 09:32, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Different than" is not identical in meaning to "wrong". --Jayron32 16:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Akld guy, I would agree with you, except that Little Jim of The Goon Show was always exclaiming "He's fallen in the water", not "… into the water". It always got a laugh, and I don't recall anyone ever complaining about the grammar of this decidedly British character. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:12, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One character on one TV show is not an arbiter of how an entire nation speaks, let alone the way English is spoken in other nations. Akld guy (talk) 22:27, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It was a radio show. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 04:06, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're correct, and I knew that because I'm old enough to remember President Eisenhower talking on the radio about peace in the middle east. I simply forgot what I was saying while cutting and pasting. You probably have no idea how incredibly difficult it is to cut 'n paste and Backspace on an iPad. Damn thing doesn't even have a Delete key. Akld guy (talk) 21:09, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to the question (as with almost all "Why" or "How come" questions about language) is "because that's the way it is". Usually you can give a historical account of how the situation developed, but there is usually no meaningful answer to "why". A parallel case is "in front of" vs "behind". "In back of" exists in American English but is almost unknown in British English; whereas "before" is almost exclusively used of time in current English (using it of space is now literary or archaic). On the other hand "behind" is rarely used of time. --ColinFine (talk) 10:02, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I thought about the pair: Russian/Portuguese (they really belong to the same Indo-European family, but I think they are far enough from each other, in terms of vocabulary, etymology, morphology, and syntax).

Also (I think) the pair Japanese/Korean (both being regarded as language isolates).

Maybe also the pair Spanish/Greek (again, they really belong to the same Indo-European family, but are still far enough from each other - from a linguistic point of view, aren't they?).

Any other examples? HOOTmag (talk) 19:59, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Please note that languages which have speakers who have frequent contact with each other will have some cross contamination, in terms of phonology, vocabulary, and structure. Even though Japanese and Korean are technically isolated, historically (unless they aren't), that doesn't mean that those languages will not feel influence from their close neighbors. Close cultural connections between the Japanese and Koreans would naturally lead to some crossover between their languages. As another famous example, Romanian is traditionally considered a Romance language, but one with considerable influence from its slavic neighbors. You can read more about this at Stratum (linguistics). As far as why languages may sound similar to you, I'm not sure I could answer that directly, except to direct you to concepts like Pareidolia, whereby your brain creates patterns out of randomness: in this case your brain has created a connection between two languages (like, for example, Russian and Portuguese) which do not share any actual connection. This is a function not of the sounds themselves, but of human neurology. --Jayron32 20:13, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

About Slavic influence on Romanian, see also Balkan sprachbund and, for that matter, Sprachbund generally. —Tamfang (talk) 20:31, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Any other examples?

Reminds me those brief moments when Finnish sounds Italian to French ears. Mainly at the end of a phrase when a Finn asks something, it somehow sounds "Italian-like", of course if you don't listen too carefully to the words themselves. Akseli9 (talk) 20:37, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• When I had read only the title of the thread, the pair Portuguese/Polish struck me immediately, due to their nasal vowels, penultimate accent, and plethora of fricatives. I'd also mention that Hungarian and English strike me as extremely similar when at the threshold of hearing, for example. This seems primarily due to the frequency of closed syllables in both languages. Swedish and Finnish also strike me as similar, although I have not heard nearly as much of those as the first two pairs I have mentioned. The similarity seems more prosodic than phonemic, think of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets and skip to the second half of this video to hear som of the Kalevala. Of course for all I know, neither actually speaks the language. μηδείς (talk) 02:15, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To my ear, Armenian and Turkish sound very similar and I have to listen very carefully to figure out which one is spoken. I think it's a question of proximity having influenced stress patterns and shape of vowels towards convergence, because, linguistically, the two are absolutely unrelated. --Xuxl (talk) 09:14, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In Old Egyptian, the joint word is probably intended to point at the fact that, the person using the "fishing rod" - "waits" for a fish to be caught.

Is there any other (modern ? ) language having this lexical property? i.e any other language, whose words - for "Fishing rod " - and for "waiting ", originate from the same word in that language? HOOTmag (talk) 08:51, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

They are etymologically unrelated ([6], [7]), they don't originate from Old Egyptian. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:10, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not talking about English, but rather about Old Egyptian, as clearly indicated in the title of this thread. Anyways, to make things even clearer, I've just changed the order of words in that title. HOOTmag (talk) 09:17, 18 November 2015 (UTC)\[reply]

BINGO !!!!!! Yes , there is such a (modern) language. This translator gives both meanings of the same word, which - btw - exist in both the biblical language and the modern one. 84.228.126.160 (talk) 09:32, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In Spanish, it seems like epicene -eca is preferred for "old" peoples (olmeca, tolteca, azteca), but gendered forms -eco and -eca are preferred for "current" peoples (mixteco/a, zapoteco/a, yucateco/a, guatemalteco/a). Does anybody know why this is? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 12:56, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I can't say for sure, but the pattern seems to be that those older terms ended in "l" in the local language. Olmec, for example.[8] And according to the Real Academia website, azteca in its noun form is considered masculine. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:35, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what the Real Academia website says about azteca:

(Del náhuatl aztécatl, habitante de Aztlan).

1. adj. Se dice del individuo de un antiguo pueblo invasor y dominador del territorio conocido después con el nombre de México.

2. adj. Perteneciente o relativo a este pueblo.

3. m. Idioma nahua.

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:39, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why do some English words have oe or ae? And how do you pronounce this weird spelling? Do you pronounce the first vowel or second vowel, or does it have its own pronunciation?

Examples:

• Aesop
• Oedipus
• bunyaviridae
• foetus
• manoeuvre 71.79.234.132 (talk) 15:29, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You find these helpful:[9][10] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:45, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The words have those letter combinations come from a number of sources. Some technically originated as Typographic ligatures or former letters no longer in use anymore, such as Æ (known as the "ash"). In almost all cases, they are Loanwords from other languages. Aesop and Oedipus for example comes from Greek, manoeuvre is French, and the -ae ending is from Latin. (See here). Foetus is a special case, it represents a misspelling of the original latin word "fetus" based on a hypercorrection because it was incorrectly assumed to be Greek. In English, there isn't necessarily any set of consistent rules for dealing with this; often the pronunciation mimics the source language. For example, in Oedipus, a Greek word, the "Oed" is pronounced like the first syllable of "Edward", while in German names that include the spelling, like Schroedinger, the "oe" is an alternate spelling of "ö", the pronunciation of which is covered at German_language#Vowels. --Jayron32 15:52, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• That'd be the German pronunciation. In English we usually pronounce German "oe" or "ö" like an ordinary English "o". --70.49.170.168 (talk) 18:34, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No we don't. Bazza (talk) 18:48, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We do sometimes. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say the pronciation shown in the Goebbels article is a hybrid between German and English, the sort of thing a non-German-speaker might produce if attempting the German pronunciation—as transcribed by a non-rhotic English-speaker. Anyway, it's unsourced. On the other hand, I give you Hitler Has Only Got One Ball, in which the Goebbels line is greatly weakened if "Goe" does not rhyme with "no". --70.49.170.168 (talk) 02:59, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The actual German vowel is the Open-mid front rounded vowel, which is hard for English speakers to pronounce correctly, so most English speakers approximate it as an R-colored vowel instead, usually ɝ. --Jayron32 19:29, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From German, there is also ae/"ä". StevenJ81 (talk) 19:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I assume your procreation of Oedipus is based on American usage. Over here the first vowel would more commonly be pronounced as the vowel sound in 'heat'. 82.8.32.177 (talk) 16:00, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

British English pronunciation of each of your words is:

• Aesop: /ˈiːsɒp/ EE-sop
• Oedipus /ˈiːd[invalid input: 'ɨ']pəs/ EE-dip-us
• bunyaviridae /bʌnjəˈvɪrɪdaɪ/ bun-yə-VIR-id-eye
• foetus /ˈfiːtəs/ FEET-əs
• manoeuvre /mənˈoʊvə/ /mənˈuːvə/ mən-OO-vuh

Bazza (talk) 18:26, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In American English, the letter combinations are frequently dropped in current usage. Proper names like Aesop and Oedipus keep them, and so do Latin plurals like -ae. But other words like fetus and maneuver are spelled without the "o", and encylopedia without the "a". StevenJ81 (talk) 19:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just of note, the "o" wasn't dropped from fetus, it was added. See Fetus#Etymology, which also notes an "ae" variant as well. The other ones were letter dropping rather than letter adding. --Jayron32 19:16, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Re "maneuver": Do Americans refer to a writer's or painter's "euver" (rather than their "oeuvre"), and if not, why not? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:03, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, "oeuvre". I think initial letters are more likely to stay put. (Maybe that explains Aesop and Oedipus?) We use "aeronautics", too (although the US went to "airplane" from "aeroplane" rather sooner than the UK did). Aesthetics tends to keep its "a", too, though not always.

I understood your comment above about "fetus". But I suspect that in the US what happened is that "fetus" represents a dropped "o" from the hypercorrected UK version. I don't know that for sure, though. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:27, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that "oeuvre" stays as it is because it's thought of as an unassimilated loanword. As for Aeschylus and Oedipus, the American simplification of ae and oe avoided personal names – this is the same reason why we write "Caesar" and "Phoebe". (Geographic names, though, can vary: "Judaea" became "Judea", but "Aegean" didn't change.) "Aerial" and related forms are somewhat of a separate beast: that root, unusually, contained a disyllabic āe in Latin rather than a diphthongal ae, so I think it's exempted from the reform for etymological reasons. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 08:07, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also, regarding the "Do Americans..." question, especially the "Why not?" variety, the answer is just that language is never that consistent, especially English. This lack of consistency is not a unique property of American English, other varieties of English have their own inconsistencies among supposedly regular patterns in equal measure. They are just inconsistent in different ways. --Jayron32 23:25, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Bazza. I think you contradict yourself, regarding manoeuvre: If it's mən-OO-vuh, then it can't be /mənˈoʊvə/, because OO is never pronounced /oʊ/, at least not in English. HOOTmag (talk) 20:12, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, not a contradiction, just a struggle with IPA! I should've typed /mənˈuːvə/, which I've corrected above. Thanks. Bazza (talk) 21:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Entirely OR, but in my experience in US English, the final r is always pronounced. shoy (reactions) 15:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See wikt:vertebrae and wikt:formulae and wikt:minutiae and wikt:algae.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:19, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See wikt:does and wikt:goes and wikt:potatoes and wikt:tomatoes and wikt:doer and wikt:poet and wikt:poetic and wikt:brae and wikt:Israel and wikt:Michael and wikt:Nathanael and wikt:subpoenaed and wikt:Caesar.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:37, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what your point is, Wavelength. Subpoenaed and Caesar are the only two here that have anything to do with the real topic here. (OK. I'm not sure about poem and derivatives.) The first five are standard English constructions that happen in the course of events to put oe next to each other. Brae is Scots. The following three are from Hebrew, where ae represents two consecutive, but separate, vowel sounds. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:30, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The topic of the original post is English words with "ae" or "oe". —Wavelength (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah but it's pretty obvious that the words you listed are not the kind of words the OP is asking about. --Viennese Waltz 09:11, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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]

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]

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]

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 developing personal skills and excellence, 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]

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]

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: [11], 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]

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: [12] --Jayron32 21:12, 19 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]