Language desk
< November 2	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	November 4 >

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.

November 3[edit]

Translation meaning[edit]

What is the direct translation of Veniete Adoremus Dominum? It is Latin and I need it to know what it means in English.

Heh, found it in Wikipedia no less! At Adeste Fideles#Latin lyric it says it means Come, let us adore the Lord. Hyenaste ^(tell) 03:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and it is venite, not veniete. Lesgles (talk) 21:25, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Meanings of alternate conjugations of Anochecer (spanish)[edit]

The Spanish word Anochecer confuses me a bit and I have yet to find a good online explanation... so here goes the question: I know that it means 'nightfall/to get dark' but when it becomes conjugated to something like the future tense, el form to 'el anochecera', does this mean that it means "He/it will grow dark"? Or does the meaning change when it is applied to people instead of dusk? --69.255.250.201 05:14, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to WordReference, the verb anochecer can have two meanings. One is to get dark, the other is to be somewhere at nightfall. So your example, él anochecerá, presumably could also mean he will be (at a certain place) at nightfall. ---Sluzzelin 08:19, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The profession of neurology[edit]

I was wondering if there was a professional term for one who is a neurologist. (What would be written in a medical degree?) For example, one can be a secretary, but the professional term is an "administrative assistant." Are people that are neurologists just neurologists? Thanks. --Proficient 07:49, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think neurologists are considered professionals enough in themselves, so nobody has bothered having the term rephrased in fancy mumbo-jumbo... 惑乱分からん 11:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. The reason for fancy titles is when the actual job name isn't very impressive:

Secretary -> Administrative Assistant

Garbage Man -> Sanitation Engineer

Janitor -> Custodian

Walmart Stock Boy -> Associate

Thus, since neurologist already sounds professional, there's no need to come up with a fancy name, such a name would only get on people's nerves. StuRat 21:18, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Words beginning with 'C' in German[edit]

I've noticed that there are very few words in German that begin with the letter C, and those that do seem to be borrowed from another language, e.g. der Computer, das Curry. Is there any reason for this, and are there any 'real' German words beginning with C? --Richardrj ^talk ^email 13:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't come up with any, though some borrowings, such as Christentum (from Greek), are much older than Computer and Curry. If you count proper names, there's Calw, Hermann Hesse's hometown, the spelling of which dates back to the 11th century. German orthography wasn't codified until relatively recently, and back in the 19th century words such as Zentrum and zivil (both with Latin roots, of course) where often spelled Centrum and civil.---Sluzzelin 14:41, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of place names also changed since the 19th century; Köln (Cologne) used to be Cölln, Kassel used to be Cassel, just to name those I can immedially recall. I assume this was to mirror the general replacement of c by k. Most of what remained unchanged at the time must be words starting with ch. All examples I can come up with are of Greek origin, I think: Charisma, chronisch, Chronik, Chimäre, Chirurgie, etc.

I think it's a bit like the most recent orthography reform. ph can be replaced by f in most cases, except when words of Greek origin are affected: Physik and Philosoph, for example. —da Pete (ばか) 15:57, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The answer to the question about "the reason for this," as Sluzzelin implies, is that Germany orthography has been reformed since the 19th century to move toward a one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and graphemes. In German, the letter 'c' does not correspond to a unique phoneme, and so it has been removed from the orthography except in borrowed words. (Before 'e', 'ä', 'i', and 'y', it is pronounced like 'z' and has generally been replaced by this letter in orthographic reforms. Reforms have similarly changed 'c' to 'k' before other letters.) The one exception is the combination 'ch', which does correspond almost uniquely to a phoneme (albeit with two allophones). However, the 'ch' phoneme does not occur initially in standard German (Hochdeutsch), except in a few Greek borrowings. Marco polo 16:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's still not quite the full story: we still need to explain why the 'ch' phoneme does not occur initially, when most other phonemes do. (Actually, you could argue that the 'ch' phoneme does occur initially, and that 'h' is its allophone in that position.)

There are two sources for modern standard German 'ch'. One is from Proto-Germanic *x (from PIE *k via Grimm's Law), as in acht (=Latin octo). At the start of words, however, this became h: Herz (=Latin cord-). English did the same thing, only we write 'ch' as gh and have largely stopped pronouncing it: eight, heart.

The other source is Proto-Germanic *k via the High German consonant shift: English make = machen. However, the fricative-producing part of that shift only took affect after vowels, so never produced any word-initial 'ch'. --Ptcamn 06:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My favorite is de:Chuchichäschtli ([ˈχʊχːiˌχæʃtli]), though it is only dialectal. --Janneman 00:32, 4 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Paragraph alignment[edit]

Can somebody tell me which the most widely used format for aligning paragraphs is? Does the first sentence of a new paragraph always begin a few centimetres from the margin? If so, what exactly is that system of punctuation called? Thanks for your time.--202.164.137.73 14:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the first sentence is usually indented by half a centimetre or so. (Another method I've seen is to skip a line.) The main reason for this seems to be to signal the start of a new paragraph clearly when the previous line finishes at the right hand side of the page. Thus, the first paragraph of a new page or section doesn't need to be indented. I don't think it has a name, it's just a convention. --Richardrj ^talk ^email 14:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hard return may be of some use. As may Indentation. Hope these help.--Andrew c 17:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Per a 1960's typesetters' textbook, the first line of a paragraph should be indented so that the whitespace formed by the indentation is square. Zocky | picture popups 18:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Indented paragraphs" is a reasonable name for this style, and "block paragraphs" for the other style where there is no indent but the next paragraph is spaced down a bit. Of course web pages are normally rendered with block paragraphs, and this style is also common in business writing and some kinds of reports. In printed books, magazines, and newspapers I expect to see indented paragraphs, but block paragraphs are used sometimes, especially in the kind of nonfiction where text is frequently interrupted by things like equations and computer programs. This subject happened to come up at my office a few days ago, and I looked over about 20 computer-related books. Several were published by O'Reilly and these all used block paragraphs, but most of the others used indented ones. So in short, the answer to the original question probably depends on what kind of material you're thinking about. --Anonymous, 04:15 UTC, November 4.

Oh, really? JackofOz 02:37, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Phonemic disctinction between /r/ and /ɹ/[edit]

What languages distinguish between /ɹ/ and /r/, /ʁ/, or any of the other "r sounds"? Mo-Al 17:43, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish distrinugishes between the flap /ɾ/ and a trill /r/ (minimal pair pero, "but", and perro, "dog"). Same for Portuguese, caro, "expensive", and carro, "car". Some more are listed at Alveolar_approximant#In_other_languages, and the other articles covering the specific IPA sounds.--Andrew c 18:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the languages listed in Alveolar_approximant#In_other_languages, I am aware of such a distinction in Tamil and Malayalam. Marco polo 19:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Armenian has all three that you've listed as phonemes. I don't think speakers consider the uvular sound an "r" sound but that could be sort of an arbitrary literatist distinction. Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:48, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]