Language desk
< February 12	<< January \| Feb \| Mar >>	February 14 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 13[edit]

novel[edit]

What word would a person writing in neo-latin use to mean 'novel', with the contemporary meaning of the word? 'Romana'? 'Novela'? Something else? (I know the Vatican has put out a dictionary of contemporary latin but their translations often run to several words per term) Duomillia 04:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Novel" as in "long story" opposed to "short-story"? (In many languages, I think "roman*" refers to "long stories" and "novel*" to "short-stories"/novellas.) 惑乱分からん 05:32, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Off the top of my head, fabula. Of course the ancients had novels (it appears that Wikipedia lacks an article with a decent overvew of ancient novels however—for the basic names see here and add Petronius and Apuleius), and I'd feel better if I were to hit on a passange in an ancient author referring to one of their novels by some noun. Wareh 16:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Historia should also be considered. It can be found in modern usage, and Longus even (provocatively? see note 16 here) uses the Greek word historia to refer to his own work (ἱστορίαν ἔρωτος). Certainly the old vernacular verse romances were often styled Histoire de... too. Wareh 16:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

the word, "cardinal"[edit]

What was named first: the bird,"cardinal"; or the Catholic Church dignitary,"cardinal"? If the Catholic Church dignitary,"cardinal", was not named first, why did the Catholic Church choose the bird,"cardinal", to emulate? Johnnycool 12:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

According to [1]:

Cardinal, 1125, "one of the ecclesiastical princes who constitute the sacred college,"
from L. cardinalis "principal, chief, essential," from cardo (gen. cardinis) 
"that on which something turns or depends," originally "door hinge." 
Ecclesiastical use began for the presbyters of the chief (cardinal) churches of Rome.

The N.Amer. songbird (Cardinalis virginianus) is attested from 1678, 
so named for its resemblance to the red robes of the cardinals.

惑乱分からん 12:32, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. Since the cardinal family is found only in the Americas, it makes sense that English speakers encountered cardinals first. —An gr 13:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vowel height, backness and tone contour[edit]

These 3 concepts are all in different levels - we have front and "high" vowels as [i], and back, "low" ones as [ɑ]. For tonal languages, tone contour differ - e.g. Mandarin's 2nd tone is /35/, which is something from the middle rising to the highest.

How do I distinguish the different levels of all 3 concepts? For example, I can distinguish vowels of different heights by adjusting mouth openness - so that I don't mix up bed and bad. But I have no idea about the other 2.

When tone contour, say, is in 5 levels, can we use "do re mi fa so" in Music to understand a language's tones? I think music concepts may help in improving speaking.--Fitzwilliam 15:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"High" tongue height has nothing to do with overall "high" tone -- those are two independent concepts. And linguistic tone is always relative and contextual within a particular overall utterance, so that musical absolute pitch isn't necessarily all that helpful. AnonMoos 16:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Then how do I learn the tones of a particular language? I suppose there are some patterns within the "sound" system of one particular language.--Fitzwilliam 16:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Listen and imitate? 惑乱分からん 21:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you're skilled with it, analyze the IPA definitions for english phonemes. The 'alveolar' and 'palatal' definitions would benefit even native speakers. Learning tones is the same way a non-native person would learn Mandarin, through numbers and representations, but there is no substitute of learning by repetition from a native speaker. Notation could help in acquiring the relative tones, of course, but it isn't the best way to go about it. z ε n  07:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alphabetizing, Part 3[edit]

How should I collate the following five: Ill, I'll Stand By You, If I Should Love Again, That's, That Is? Thanks a lot. Xiner (talk, email) 16:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Depends whether you think that punctuation should be ignored or not. If you do, it would go If I Should Love Again, Ill, I'll Stand By You, and That Is, That's. If you think that punctuation should not be ignored, you'd go I'll Stand By You, If I Should Love Again, Ill, and then That's, That Is. See Collation#Compound words and special characters. --Richardrj ^talk ^email 16:17, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can try using a spreadsheet program, like Excel, to sort it for you. Maybe you will l agree with it. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 20:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, and I can't back this up with any evidence other than my own feelings, I'd go with

If I Should Love Again
Ill
I'll Stand By You
That Is
That's

Hope that somehow helps! My reasoning, by the way, is If I Should Love Again is obviously first, and normally if two phrases start with the same letters, but one goes on after the first one, the longer one goes last (i.e. hell, then hello), at least in all dictionaries I've ever seen. I would ignore punctuation.Goyston talk, contribs, play 22:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Native of/Person of a Particular Place[edit]

I was looking for a website that would help me find the right way to refer to people of a certain place, such as: New York/New Yorker, San Diego/San Diegan, Germany/German, etc. The reason why I ask is that I am looking for the correct term to refer to someone who is from Connecticut.

AFAIK the answer to your question is Nutmegger. Knowing Wikipedia, we're bound to have a list of these things somewhere, but I don't know where. —An gr 19:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a nickname. I am looking for the formal name that you would call a person from Connecticut...

Well, it is a nickname. But when I lived in Connecticut it was also the only word I ever heard for it. Otherwise you just have to say "He's from Connecticut". I never heard anyone say "Connecticuter" or "Connecticutian" or anything like that. —An gr 19:50, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Connecticutian is acceptable. I don't know if it's pronounced Cunn-net-tih-cute-ee-in or Cunn-net-tih-cue-shin. (Don't have time for IPA right now). − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 19:59, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As Angr said, Connecticutian is not a real word. If you want to invent it, you also get to decide how it should be pronounced. Just let us know which one you prefer. :D Stefán 20:08, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See demonym for a general description with some examples. It links to list of adjectival forms of place names which has a lot more examples. The list gives "Connecticuters" and colloquially "Nutmeggers". You can also often find them by looking in a dictionary. Ingrid 20:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

language richness[edit]

Hi, I've asked this one on the Humanities desk already, because it is a fairly general question about languages, but they couldn't really answer my question, so I'm trying my luck here. I often find people refer to some languages as being "rich", for example Arabic or Classical Latin. Has anyone investigated (through philosophy, science, or even literature itself) what makes a language rich, and how we can actually judge this? The Mad Echidna 23:23, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was told in school what makes English "rich" is it's large number of words(E.G. French actually restricts the number of words;Latin is now "dead" and only grows artificially),it's borrowing from many other languages, it's constant coining of neologisms and the fact that it has many different words with very similar but subtly different meanings for the same thing (E.G. luke-warm and tepid).I would think studies of comparative linguistics may help you here.hotclaws**== 09:19, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Linguistics broadly rejects the idea of one language being "richer" than another as unscientific and often ethnocentric nonsense. What you may be seeing is people saying those languages have a rich literature, which means many books on different subjects have been written in that language. --Diderot 13:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, partial agree. Stewart, William. 1968. A sociolinguistic typology for describing national multilingualism in In Joshua Fishman, ed., Readings in the Sociology of Language (The Hague: Mouton), pp. 531-545 discusses the types, attributes and functions of languages (not what they are able to do, but what they actually do). For example a 'classical' language will often be highly codified, and perhaps have a large established vocab, not prone to frequent change, and quite possibly with specialised vocab in a large number of domains, in a way that a 'vernacular' will not. However, the vernacular will generally be equally 'rich' in those domains which are culturally relevant. It's just that classical and standardised languages will generally have more of these domains, as they are used for more subjects. Drmaik 14:07, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Although it is true that English does seem to have more words that other languages, although the question of 'what is a word' is not as simple as it might seem - a lot of languages construct words by ammending prefixes or surfixes to pre-exisiting terms - this happens to an extent in English as well, consider 'anti-dis-establish-ment-arian-ism' - and it is quesionable as to when adding a surfix creates a new word. Also consider the German language which has a habit of concating words together when a new word is needed; does this make a new word? --Neo 14:10, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another form of richness in language is how easy it is pun or otherwise give multiple meanings to a phrase. I once read an interview with Vladimir Nabokov in which he lamented that this was much easier to do in an inflected language like Russian than in English. --TotoBaggins 15:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In Borges's short story Shakespeare's Memory, the German narrator laments that English has "two registers, the Germanic and the Latinate", while his own language has only one. This could be considered a form of "richness", but from another perspective it could be viewed as a needless complication or even a form of corruption. Some people would consider Icelandic rich because it embodies precisely the opposite ideal, being very poor in loanwords but rich in invention and neologisms. It's a completely subjective quality, dependent on one's own opinion of the role language ought to serve. Bhumiya (said/done) 08:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, German also has a Germanic and a Latinate register. In fact, German often has two words for the same thing, one Germanic and one (Greco-)Latinate, where English only has one (e.g. "representation" in German is both Repräsentation and Darstellung, "pancreas" is both Bauchspeicheldrüse and Pankreas, etc.). —An gr 09:53, 15 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting. But is the Latinate vocabulary as "integrated" in German as in English? Bhumiya (said/done) 00:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not completely, but still part of the common vocabulary, I'd guess. 惑乱分からん 14:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some Latinate vocabulary is completely integrated, though. German has two verbs for "happen": the Latinate passieren and the Germanic geschehen. In this case, it's the Latinate form that is the more ordinary, colloquial word, while the Germanic word is a little more literary or elevated in style. —An gr 14:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I could also mention that in some cases, the English word is Germanic, and the German Latinate. Examples include arrow/Pfeil and keyboard/Tastatur among others. 惑乱分からん 01:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have heard the explanation the other way around. Punning is easier in English than in Russian, because it's less case-dependent. 惑乱分からん 14:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense. A joke like "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana" would be difficult in a language that had much more inflectional morphology than English. —An gr 14:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Readers of the daily Language Log blog will be familiar with the analogy where "language richness"/"number of words in a language" equates to "penis size" in that the vast majority of information is complete bullshit and in the end it doesn't really matter at all. You simply can't judge something like this, and why bother? Why try? 222.158.162.117 11:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I read a book once, Schopenhauer´s Parerga and Paralipomena, which studied this matter. Schopenhauer believed some languages were better than others because of prefixes and suffixes which would make each word mean more exactly the intended concept. He believed Latin and German were much superior to modern Romance Languages. He didn´t like the poor grammar of the English Language. A.Z. 19:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Remind me never to buy a book by someone who attributes "poor grammar" to a language and not the thickheaded speakers.222.158.162.117 05:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I´m sure Schopenhauer knew that the speakers build their own language. They change the language over time so it becomes a better or worse tool of communication. A.Z. 19:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure he did too, though he didn't surprise any sceptics by labelling his own native language "superior", alongside the "traditional" lingua franca. 61.25.248.86 03:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sceptics about what? I have to understand better what you mean so I can answer. Anyway, it was a book worth reading to me. I believe I learned a lot from it. A.Z. 03:45, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to make a point that everyone thinks their own native language is superior; it's practically human nature, and thus quite a boring "bold" statement for a philosopher to make. 61.25.248.86 06:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks A.Z. for this lead in my quest. I was thinking some philosopher ought to have addressed this issue, since it pops up frequently, and despite what someone here seems to think, it is a potentially deep and important topic. That popular discussion on it is (often) confined to bragging is disappointing, and exactly the reason why it should be claimed by philosophers and writers as their specialist domain. The Mad Echidna 04:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It´s very deep and interesting indeed. I would like to have a nice discussion over this, but Wikipedia is not the best place, I´d guess. If people have rich things to say which must be expressed, then they ought to make their language increasingly full of different words and inflexions and subtleties capable of better communicating those concepts. The opposite should be true as well: the less rich the concepts people express over time, the more rotten the language will be. I remember now a very nice essay by George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, written in 1946, in which he talks about how poor the English Language was becoming in his time. This essay is available on the Internet, just look it up on Google. And sorry for any English mistakes. A.Z. 19:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]