Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 March 31

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March 31

Arabic transcription requested, and its meaning?

I found this Arabic logo at the page of the Japanese School in Oman (オマーン補習授業校). What is its transcription and what does it mean?

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 00:34, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

It says "المدرسة اليابانية", "The Japanese School". Adam Bishop (talk) 00:45, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Adam! WhisperToMe (talk) 08:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

The Japanese says Omam Supplementary School.--Jondel (talk) 14:29, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

NGO

This seems like a rather odd term, because it defines what the thing isn't (a governmental organization) rather than what it is (a charity, etc.). Occidental might fall into the same category (non-Asian). Are there other such words ? StuRat (talk) 17:30, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Which Occidental are you talking about? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:34, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Occident, first def. StuRat (talk) 17:36, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

OK. It seems like NPO's are being separated into GO's and non-GO's. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:45, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Neither example makes sense to me. "Non-governmental organization" could just as well have been "extra-governmental organization"; it is a property of the organization. According to wikt:occident and wikt:orient, those words mean "where the sun sets" and "where the sun rises" respectively; neither is defined as the negation of the other. -- BenRG (talk) 18:06, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

You're falling for the etymological fallacy (and a particularly bad one, as obviously the apparent sunrise and sunset occurs everywhere on Earth). Regardless of the origin of the word, "occident" now means non-Asian. StuRat (talk)

There's no etymological fallacy on the part of BenRG. Occidental no more means non-oriental than does the term apply to Australia. Occidental and Oriental are not contradictory, but contrary.

I don't see a problem here. It's a blanket category for "highly diverse groups of organizations engaged in a wide range of activities". I can't think of another title that would be any better. Clarityfiend (talk) 18:13, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I didn't ask if there was a problem with "NGO". I asked if there were other similar words terms that define something based on what it is not, versus what it is. (But, if you want to debate problems with the term "NGO", that would be that it doesn't limit usage sufficiently. Isn't McDonalds a "non-government organization" ?). StuRat (talk) 18:22, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I gave you one in my prevous comment: "Non-profit organization." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:09, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

One I see used in palaeontology circles is "Non-avian dinosaur" (11 uses in our Dinosaur article in addition to the redirect notice). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 18:33, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

The idea of classifying a charity as either an NGO or a Governmental Organization makes sense when one considers that one has the force of the state, the funding of the national tax base, and the strings of state politics attached to it, while the other does not. The government can also sponsor charities, but they are governmental charities: Groups like AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are clearly charities, but they also are supported by the U.S. government. Other organizations may do the same work, but not under government support (and thus, unattached to official policies and politics of said government) such as Oxfam or the International Committee of the Red Cross. --Jayron32 19:02, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Nonlinear dynamics - and you're in good company in thinking that type of term is a bit unsatisfying. Stanislaw Ulam once said

“ Using a term like 'nonlinear science' is like referring to the bulk of zoology as the study of non-elephant animals.[1] ”

In math, you'll also see the term nondegenerate used quite a bit, as well as nontrivial. We say nonlinear dynamics mostly because most of physics prior to the 20th century was concerned with linear systems, to the point where that was considered the norm, and further emphasis was needed to specify nonlinearity. For nondegeneracy and nontriviality, those are just very convenient short hand for stating claims and writing proofs, because e.g. the empty set or the trivial group are often handled as separate cases. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:09, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Also, Wiktionary has 6,373 English words prefixed with 'non-' [2], but some of them are relatively obscure. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:16, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

NSAID is one that always bugs me, but maybe it makes more sense to people who know more about pharmacology. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Generally, these terms come up because we seem to like dichotomy and binary opposition - it's nice to divide the world in two with the stroke of a pen. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:19, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Or a pencil. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:21, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

The world is divided into two types of people: Those who go around dividing the world into two types of people ("dividers), and those who don't ("non-dividers"). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:57, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I remember, as a child of about 7, asking my Dad why true books were classified as "non-fiction". Why not a descriptor that says what they are rather than what they are not? I still wonder about that.

People on trial are asked to plead either "guilty" or "not guilty".

One of my favourite pet peeves is "Don't forget ...". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:57, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

The guilt one makes sense to me. The negation of Guilt_(law) is not innocence :) SemanticMantis (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

The media often use "innocent" as a synonym for "not guilty", but they're not necessarily the same thing. When a jury decides "not guilty", they may be convinced of the subject's innocence, but they also could be saying that there was insufficient evidence, i.e. that the state did not prove its case. Then there's the slippery slope of labeling "non-fiction" as "true". I recall a line from Woody Allen in the mid-60s about how he planned to work on "a non-fiction version of the Warren Report." The authors of the Warren Report would have said it was non-fiction. Whether it was "true" or not has been debated since then, just a tad. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:09, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

That the court finds them "not guilty" always bothered me, in cases where they really mean "there was insufficient evidence to determine if they are guilty". I suppose there are cases where their innocence is absolutely proven (say a video turns up showing the real culprit), but most such cases likely never make it to trial. StuRat (talk) 22:20, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

When it becomes clear that the accused was truly innocent, the media might say he was "exonerated". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:08, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

There is the legal concept of actual innocence, which can be a type of defense at trial and a type of allowable ground for appeal, especially in cases such as death penalty cases where repeated appeals based on procedural faults may otherwise be denied. μηδείς (talk) 23:41, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

The law's focus is much like Wikipedia's disinterest in the truth. We're interested only in verifiability. The law is concerned only about whether a charge can be sustained, either beyond a reasonable doubt or on the balance of probabilities, or whatever threshold may apply. That's what "guilty" means in the legal sense. Not whether the person actually did it and should pay the price, or not - that sort of "guilty" gets into matters of conscience and morality. If legal guilt cannot be established, then whether the accused actually did it or not is irrelevant to the outcome of the trial. "Not guilty" is not a statement of innocence. Double jeopardy applies in most places, meaning a person found not guilty of a crime can go around boasting with impunity that they actually did it and got away with it. The law is aware of this possibility. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:54, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

That is legal theory and the way the court works according to it's officers, but the jury does have a conscience, and there is such a thing as jury nullification, where a jury may believe the crime as charged was committed in fact, but that the guilty party does not deserve puishment. μηδείς (talk) 01:33, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

In theory, sure, but there are ways of imposing consequences on someone found not guilty and then bragging that he actually did the crime. O.J. never even admitted actual guilt (at least not in court), but he lost a wrongful-death lawsuit. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:58, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Those were different charges, with different thresholds of proof. They just happened to relate to the same circumstance. He is still not guilty of murder, even if he was found responsible for her death. Afaik, he has never admitted any guilt, and we should be wary of suggesting that he was guilty (BLP and all that). He wrote a book called If I Did It, not I Did It. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:09, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Precisely, preponderance of evidence in the suit, and still not legally guilty of murder. There were rumors that he had 'fessed up to select friends, but if that did happen, it was apparently inadmissible in court. I wonder if you know that the Goldman family sued to prevent publication of that book, and then acquired the rights to it and titled it with a cover-filling "I DID IT", with the "If" contained within the "I" in small print. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:43, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

There's also perjury, and my favorite, vigilantism. μηδείς (talk) 01:33, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

See All pages with titles beginning with Non-.—Wavelength (talk) 20:08, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

NGO function like when there should be Government intervention , but the Government doesn't so , a group organizes to fulfill the role or function. They are many times by the government or they work together.--Jondel (talk) 14:27, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Scheherazade

What is the correct transcription of the Persian name شهرازاد? Is it Šahrāzād‎ or Šahrazād‎ (i.e. is the first second a long or short)?--Carnby (talk) 18:45, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Its correct transcription is شهرزاد. No a long or short. --Omidinist (talk) 20:01, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

So Šhrzād? With just a vowel? Has some letter droppyed from Middle Persian?--Carnby (talk) 22:57, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

You misunderstood me. I could be more precise. Your شهرازاد has three syllables, mine has only two. Omit that alif in the middle, you will have two syllables. The first one will be Šahr, the second one will be zād. --Omidinist (talk) 07:11, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Our article gives the answer, there are two variants: full شهرازاد Šahrāzād [ʃæhrɒzɒd] and short شهرزاد Šahrzād [ʃæhrzɒd]. I cannot explain the vowel deletion in the latter (Google does not find anything about this).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 08:13, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

شهرازاد must be a mispronunciation on the basis of European translations of the Arabic book. You do not find it in any Persian source. شهرزاد means the one who has been born in the city. But شهرازاد means the free city, which cannot be the name of a person. --Omidinist (talk) 09:03, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

So the correct Persian form is only Šahrzād?--Carnby (talk) 09:10, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. --Omidinist (talk) 09:47, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Gobi/Shamo

I found on a dictionary that shamo is the Chinese name for the Gobi Desert, but the article says the Chinese (Pǔtōnghuà) name is Gēbì. What language is shamo then?--Carnby (talk) 19:33, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

沙漠 is Chinese, and merely means 'desert'. The name Gēbì is added to specify which particular desert you are talking about, as there are quite a few on this planet. In this case, the specific name comes from the Mongolian Говь, meaning 'desert'. This is in the first paragraph of the article you linked to. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 20:05, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Just to clarify KägeTorä's comment in case you can't read Chinese characters, the pinyin spelling for 沙漠 is shamo. As he says, this is just the generic word for "desert". Marco polo (talk) 20:18, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess Sahara and Atacama are shamo as well in Chinese.--Carnby (talk) 09:07, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Of course. Being deserts, they would be, but would still have specific names, such as 撒哈拉沙漠 for 'Sahara Desert' and 阿他加马沙漠 for 'Atacama Desert'. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 09:49, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Why did /am-er-EE-ka/ become /a-ME-ri-ka/?

I've just finished reading Toby Lester's The Fourth Part of the World, in which I became aware for the first time of the correct pronunciation of 'Amerigo', as in Amerigo Vespucci. I've always said it with the accent on the 2nd syllable, as if I were about to talk about "a merry-go-round". But Lester convinced me it should be like /am-er-EE-go/. The Latin would have been Americus (/am-er-EE-kus/), and its female form would have been America (/am-er-EE-ka/). Back then, that was how they said the name of the newly discovered continent we now know as South America (the word "America" was only later attached to the New World as a whole, with North and South parts).

So, when and why did /am-er-EE-ka/ come to be pronounced as /a-ME-ri-ka/? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:43, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Listen to West Side Story where it is still /am-er-EE-ka/ - Latino (Puerto Rican). /a-ME-ri-ka/ sounds to me like an eastern european accent. There are other ways to say it in AM ENG, like, AH-MARE-i-ka and a-mery-ca. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:57, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Many long English words tend to migrate the stress to the antepenultimate (third from last) syllable. There are some more complex rules noted here. But the tendency is there to move the stress to the antepenultimate, thus a-ME-ri-ca and not some other stress pattern. --Jayron32 22:05, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

(EC) Very probably for the British disregard for stress in Romance languages. We tend to use Germanic stress (not all the time, of course, because of our Euro neighbours) to a certain extent. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 22:20, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Alanscottwalker, there's plenty of languages, with diverse stress patterns, spoken in Eastern Europe. Which Eastern European accent do you mean? — Kpalion^(talk) 10:26, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

None. I just put it down to the difficulty of literary writing-in-accent. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:41, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

• Latin has antepenultimate stress unless the penult syllable contains a long vowel or a final consonant, of which -ri- has neither, so without a macron over the ĩ (to indicate length) there would be no way for non-Italians to guess the penult should be long from the Latinate spelling. μηδείς (talk) 22:27, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

In Italian Amerigo is [ameˈriːɡo], but America [aˈmɛːɾika] comes probably from the Latinized form A(i)imericus of Vespucci's name, in turn coming from a Germanic name Haimerich meaning "powerful in his land". I think the penultimate stress could have been born in some circle of scholars, who pronounced Latin words according to national (and awkward) rules.--Carnby (talk) 22:57, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

In general, they say it "ah-ME-ree-cah" in West Side Story.[3] I see them emphasizing the REE sometimes, when the meter seems to need it that way.

I like to be in a-ME-ree-ca

OK by me in a-ME-ree-ca

Everything free in a-ME-ree-ca

For a small fee in a-me-REE-ca

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:59, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

The Spanish Real Academia website spells it América, hence the stress on the "e". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:06, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

That's very interesting, given that for over 200 years the Spanish refused to use the word "America" at all, as they considered it was honouring the wrong discoverer. They felt the honour should have gone to Columbus. Vespucci was the first to realise that the places Columbus discovered were not part of the (East) Indies, as Columbus always believed, but an unsuspected new continent; in that sense Vespucci was their "discoverer", but Columbus still discovered them in the (novo)mundane sense. The coiner of the word "America", Matthias Ringmann, later realised his error and tried to change the maps he was producing with Martin Waldseemüller, but it was too late, the name had stuck (except in the hispanosphere, for a while). So now, after being historical holdouts, the Spanish are dictating how the word should be stressed. Very interesting. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:28, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Hence the Latin American country Colombia, and the semi-unofficial alternate name for the US, "Columbia". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:54, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Do USAmericans generally pronounce those two names identically? I know the Spanish call the country /ko-LOM-bia/, not /ko-LUM-bia/. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:56, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Same in Italian: [koˈlombja] for Latin American country and [koˈlumbja] for U.S. federal district.--Carnby (talk) 09:07, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

In American English, the two are perfect homophones. That is, the District of Columbia and the nation of Colombia are pronounced identically; to pronounce Colombia as natives would could be seen as a bit of an affectation. --Jayron32 00:51, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

We tend to pronounce Colombia like Columbia, essentially translating it. Oddly enough, we call the country Ecuador rather than its translation Equator, possibly to avoid confusing it with "the" equator. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:34, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd call it an anglicization more than a translation. In English, there's a long-standing practice of using O for the sound of cup, particularly around the letters M, W, and N. I believe it stems from readabilty issues from before the letter U was invented and used to write vowels instead of V. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 10:00, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Is this an April fool? The Spanish/Portuguese girl's name is America (acute accent over the "e"). I know that here stress can change (balcony>balcony, July>July), but this has always been the same. In fact you just disabused me from my belief that America was named after the discoverer's daughter (like Mercedes - Benz was named after Benz's daughter). 87.81.147.76 (talk) 12:31, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I just don't believe this. A Natural History of Latin, Tore Janson, Oxford 2007, p.218 says

The stress indicated is in principle the one which was used in classical times: in most cases this is also the stress which has been used throughout the word's subsequent history.

On p. 222 -

americanus americana americanum American. [acute accent over the second "a" in each case].

If the noun was stressed on the penultimate syllable, surely the corresponding adjective would be americana. But in Portugal today the word "americano" is stressed where you would expect it to be, on the penultimate syllable. According to Jack the author says "The Latin would have been Americus" (stressed on the penultimate). So doesn't he know? 87.81.147.76 (talk) 14:52, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Seems like it's normal pronunciation. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 20:45, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what modern day Portuguese pronunciation has to do with medieval Latin. Martin Waldseemüller is usually credited with the coining of the word 'America' to refer to the New World, because it first appeared on the map he produced in 1507, which was published along with an Introduction to Cosmography. On pp. 356-7 of Toby Lester's book he sets out an argument for changing the attribution to Waldseemüller's business partner, Matthias Ringmann. Waldseemüller was a cartographer, but Ringmann was a poet and writer who was known for his love of wordplay, which drew on his knowledge of Greek and other languages that Waldseemüller did not know. That's the context in which the issue of pronunciation first appears:

• Why dwell on the question of authorship? Because whoever wrote the Introduction to Cosmography almost certainly coined the name America (which would have been pronounced "Amer-eeka"). Here too, the balance is in Ringmann's favor. ….

On p. 3, he includes a quote from the Introduction to Cosmography. Its author is talking about the then known three parts of the world (Europe, Asia and Africa), and goes on:

• These parts have in fact now been more widely explored, and a fourth part has been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci (as will be heard in what follows). Since both Asia and Africa received their names from women, I do not see why anyone should rightly prevent this [new part] from being called Amerigen – the land of Amerigo, as it were – or America, after its discoverer, Americus, a man of perceptive character.

On p. 357 he explains what "Amerigen" means:

• … a coinage that involves just the kind of multifaceted, multilingual punning that Ringmann frequently indulged in. The word combines Amerigo with gen, a form of the Greek word for "earth", creating the meaning that the author goes on to propose – "the land of Amerigo".

So, maybe I'm indulging in a little OR here, but since he clearly says America was (or "would have been") pronounced "Amer-eeka", and we know that Amerigo was and still is stressed penultimately, does that not suggest that all Latin forms were also so stressed – Amerícus, Ameríca, Amerícum, …, and that anyone saying América would have sounded like a visitor from the future? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:09, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

• To make the relevant point again, unless the word were spelt Amerĩca, with a macron (bar) above the 'i', there'd be no way for a Latin speaker to know from the spelling itself that -ri- should bear the stress.

As in all other Latin words in which the penult is light (no long vowel, no final consonant) there is only one permissible pronunciation, that with antepenultimate stress. A-mė-ri-ca acording to the rules of Latin phonology.

If the German cartographers didn't know how to pronounce, or didn't indicate how to pronounce the untypical Amerígo in Italian, the default according to the standard rules of Latin would fit the current pronunciation in German, Engish, Spanish and Portuguese.

Even wiktionary gives just America with no sign of length, while it does show a macron on the final a of the ablative singular.

μηδείς (talk) 06:15, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

I was in the library earlier today and I saw the book on the shelf - Toby Lester, The Fourth Part of the World, New York 2010, ISBN 978-1-4165-3534-8. Jack, above, quotes Toby as saying

America was (or "would have been") pronounced "Amer-eeka".

This is not what Toby wrote. On page 356 he says this:

Why dwell on this question of authorship? Because whoever wrote the "Introduction to Cosmography" almost certainly coined the name America (which would have been pronounced "Amer-eeka").

That's why I thought it was an April fool.

A happy Easter to you all. 87.81.147.76 (talk) 15:56, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

That is the exact quote I posted above. Where I later referred to that passage, I put "would have been" in quotes, just like I'm doing now, to indicate it's his verbatim words, while the surrounding text, which was not a verbatim quotation, was not in quotes. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:48, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm really confused now. You said

he clearly says America was [parenthesis] pronounced "Amereeka"

.

Knowing that this is not the way anyone would pronounce the word, as Medeis explains, where did you get that information from? 87.81.147.76 (talk) 10:33, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm relying on Toby Lester's parenthetical remark at the end of: Why dwell on this question of authorship? Because whoever wrote the "Introduction to Cosmography" almost certainly coined the name America (which would have been pronounced "Amer-eeka"). Are you suggesting that Lester is wrong (entirely possible)? Or that Ringmann said it that way but all subsequent people said it the new way, with the stress on the 2nd syllable? If the latter, that sort of answers my question as to when the pronunciation changed. But if almost everyone already said it that way, why was Ringmann saying it a different way? Maybe Lester was indulging in his own flight of fancy, assuming that a land named after Am-er-EE-go must have been intended to be said like Am-er-EE-ka. But then, if that was the case, and knowing that anyone with any Latin would have naturally stressed it antepenultimately, why did Ringmann not make it clear that his conception of the word extended to its having what would otherwise have been regarded, right from the start, as an unorthodox pronunciation? Sorry to press this point, but I'm still not clear about this. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:01, 7 April 2015 (UTC)