Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 December 5

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December 5

Kanji variants

Hi, are the following two forms both acceptable in Japanese?

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?160073_%C4%E3
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/%E4%BD%8E-bw.png

It's the difference in the final stroke that I'm interested in.

Or maybe the second one is only for Chinese? 86.135.25.44 (talk) 00:04, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

They are both acceptable in Japanese. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 01:30, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! 86.135.25.44 (talk) 01:57, 5 December 2010 (UTC).

No. Legible. But elementary school teachers would say incorrect when pupils write the kanji in the second way. See these pages for children. [1], [2], [3], and [4]. I never write it in the second way. Oda Mari (talk) 05:26, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The second one is the common accepted mordern form. I think the first one can be found in calligraphy.--刻意(Kèyì) 08:24, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

At least not in Japan. We don't write the second form. See wikt:低 and this linked page and click the links at the bottom. The second one is simplified Chinese. Oda Mari (talk) 14:47, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Oda Mari, am I right in thinking that you're a native Japanese speaker? 86.184.235.197 (talk) 18:35, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. I am a native ja speaker. Oda Mari (talk) 04:26, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

"Not to be mistaken as..."

Not to be mistaken as being associated with Wikipedia.

This has been staring me in the face at the top of the (rather busy) Wikileaks article for 24 hours now. Without getting back into the argument as to whether we need this disambiguation at the start of the article, can someone please confirm that this isn't proper English, on either side of the pond? I'd made a comment on the Talk page Talk:WikiLeaks#Not to be confused with..., but not changed it since every time it is changed, somebody seems to prefer another version. Perhaps a grammarian can step in and beat it into shape... AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:03, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not a common expression (as in "not to be mistaken for ... "), and "mistake" is usually a ditransitive verb with the indirect argument introduced by "for"; but it does occur as a simple transitive without a complement. So I would say there is nothing either ungrammatical or unclear about it. Furthermore, I can't think of a succinct way for rewording it using "mistaken ... for". --ColinFine (talk) 13:16, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I think a simple disclaimer would be clearest: WikiLeaks is not associated with Wikipedia or Wikimedia. Someone not knowing the idiom could take the existing language to mean Make no mistake: WikiLeaks is associated with Wikipedia. —Tamfang (talk) 17:35, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I personally find the original sentence a bit odd and awkward, although I can't exactly put my finger on a grammatical error. Tamfang's suggestion seems preferable to me. 86.184.235.197 (talk) 18:37, 5 December 2010 (UTC).

I think it's because it's passivising a construction that's almost always heard in the active. "Take care not to mistake A for B" or something similar does not sound so good as "A should not be mistaken for B" or just "Not to be mistaken for B". That's if people thought that WikiLeaks and Wikipedia were somehow the same thing. But when the assumption is not necessarily that they're the same thing per se but that they're related entities (e.g. Wikipedia obviously runs/owns/manages/controls WikiLeaks, or vice-versa, because they both start with "Wiki" - duh!) - then it's even murkier in the passive to warn readers not to make such assumptions. Far better to say what Tamfang said. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 02:04, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, it currently reads Note: WikiLeaks is not associated with Wikipedia, which does the job for me. (Though, to be pedantic, the problem is that it is sometimes 'associated', but wrongly...) AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:12, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

It's the passive-voice of the original version that grates on you (and me also). The above is definitely and improvement, and could be even more so by saying, "WikiLeaks is not connected with Wikipedia." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

That's also passive, btw. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 04:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

"Affiliated"?—msh210℠ 18:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Still passive. Anything that "is <transitive verb>-ed with" is a passive construction. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 04:42, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I know. I was replying to Baseball Bugs: note the indentation.—msh210℠ 07:28, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I did note it. Bugs said that what made the original expression undesirable was its use of the passive voice, but his alternative did not change that aspect of it, and neither did yours. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:30, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Chinese expression

what does '解手' mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 03:04, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Google is your friend --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:31, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Podestà

What is the female form of Podestà?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 06:31, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

What is the female form of Majesty? I think podestà is feminine. —Tamfang (talk) 06:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The Latin word ("potestas") certainly is, and I assume it still is in Italian, but it just means "power" so it's not really a title. To feminize it you have to say "donna di podesta" or "moglie di podesta" (or some other feminine noun). Adam Bishop (talk) 07:21, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

In Italian it can be both. It's normally masculine: "il podestà". "La podestà" is the feminine variant, but is very very rare (this figure was almost always a man). Usually other similar words become: attore>attrice, direttore>direttrice, governatore>governatrice, presidente>presidentessa, segretario>segretaria... --151.51.32.232 (talk) 19:24, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Origin of the word "Cover"

I read Cover version#Origin of the term, it had a lot of text, but didn't seem to actually answer the question. My guess is something to do with the physical cover of the album? Ariel. (talk) 07:05, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that it's a metaphor with market presence equated to visibility. A competitor reduces the visibility of the original, thus "covering" it. --Anonymous, 15:55 UTC, December 5, 2010.

I wouldn't think it has anything to do with the physical cover. I'd guess it means "cover" in the sense of "protect oneself by responding to", like someone saying "we need to cover their latest move", for example. 86.184.235.197 (talk) 18:52, 5 December 2010 (UTC).

The treatment in the OED suggests that Anonymous is correct. This sense of the noun is treated as a development of the sense "anything that is put or laid over ... an object, with the effect of hiding, sheltering, or enclosing it"; and the first cited use of the verb (1965), which antedates the noun usage, is in the sentence "A phonograph record company is said to cover the recording of another phonograph record company when it releases a competitive recording of the same song." Obviously, the meaning has become a bit more generalized over the years (since a "cover band", for instance, is not really competing with the original recordings it tries to recreate or restyle), but that seems to be the origin. Deor (talk) 01:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Does anonymous imply that the new version of the song would literally have covered the old one on the record store's shelf? Blakk and ekka 11:53, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Anon can answer for him/herself, but "a metaphor with market presence equated to visibility" certainly suggests that s/he's not so suggesting. Deor (talk) 12:05, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I understand that, it's just that if the new version literally covered the old one it wouldn't be a metaphor. Perhaps it's a term similar to album, which was originally a set of 78's bound into a book-format but now refers to any collection of music sold as a thematic collection. Blakk and ekka 12:25, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

When did the "thou", "thy" begin diseppearing?

Hello Wikipedian friends, please excuse my approximative English, I'm a Frenchy.

In British churches I saw many times phrases likes : "Thou arst" or "thy soul" and recently I leafed through a play from Shakespear in which I found such words. I know what these words mean because in French we say "tu" to our friends and "vous" to other people.

Question : when did the English speaking people in the world begin shifting from the "thou" to the "you" to everybody and how long did it take? Thank you very much for your explanations. Joël Deshaies. Rheims-France.--80.236.119.185 (talk) 13:29, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Our article Thou is actually pretty good. It's hard to draw a clear line when thee/thou died out, because it continued in many dialects and still exists today in a few rural areas. The picture is also confused by the use of thee/thou in religious texts, because translators tried to preserve the distinctions in the original language. As our article says, this led people to associate thee/thou with religious solemnity, and many Christians grow up with prayers that call God 'thou'. This is the only everyday use of thee/thou most people encounter, and you will see 'thee's and 'thou's used in churches long after ordinary use had died out. Particularly look at Thou#History :) 86.164.31.131 (talk) 13:41, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Thee/thou is still common in the Sheffield area. In fact, a derogatory nickname for Sheffield natives is "Deedars", in imitation of the way they pronounce these two words. This usage extends around the South Yorkshire area, and is also common around the Black Country. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:17, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the questioner means "thou art" (you are) and not "thou arst" which might be mistaken for "thou arse" ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 14:42, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The article is generally good, but it's pretty vague as to precisely when and why the pronoun disappeared from the acrolect of London society. Here's my summary of what Stephen Howe has to say in The Personal Pronouns in the Germanic Languages: Old English did not possess a T-V distinction in the modern sense, simply a distinction between singular and plural. The first clear attestation of a V form (that is, "you" with a singular referent) dates from the 13th century, and was apparently formed by analogy with the French usage of "vous". The fact that this form was imported recently may explain why it was so promiscuously applied. The mere use of "you" became a mark of cultivation. In the 15th century, "you" spread from the nobility to the up-and-coming mercantile classes, further diluting its original significance. Upwardly mobile middle-class women were particularly zealous about using "you", which may account for why "thou" disappeared from private life as well as from formal, public discourse. "You" was simply perceived as the more refined, "proper" form. The "thou" form became regarded not as the basic second-person pronoun but as an exceptional variation, reserved for intimacy or derogation. Finally, the nail in the coffin of "thou" was its adoption, in the middle of the 17th century, by radical religious groups like the Quakers. Their use of the pronoun invested it with the stink of fanaticism, leading respectable people to deliberately avoid it. LANTZY^TALK 16:40, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that "thou" is beginning to fall out of favor in religious contexts as well. I think that the New Revised Standard Version was the first notable version of the Bible to eliminate it. Ironically, this is due not only to etymological scrupulosity but to the desire, on the part of theologians and religious authorities, that Christians not perceive religiosity as something stiff and formal, and that they might have a more "intimate" relationship with the deity. (Or whatever.) The Christians most opposed to this change are those who most enjoy the idea of an iron-fisted führer in the sky, and who in their innocence imagine "thou" to be a mark of groveling prostration. And I suppose, from a descriptivist point of view, they're absolutely correct. "Who dost thou think thou art?" certainly sounds loftier than the alternative. The Biblical association has caused "thou" and "you" to switch places. LANTZY^TALK 17:08, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

To sum up; thee / thou leaves standard English at the end of the 17th Century, but continues in some northern dialects to the present day. Also used in the 18th and 19th centuries by poets and the writers of hymns and religeous works. The Book of Common Prayer (finalised in 1662) continued in use in the Church of England until about 1970 when it begins to be replaced by more modern texts, although the traditional forms remain in limited use. Many well known hymns using this style of language remain in common use. Alansplodge (talk) 09:40, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

"Thou" hasn't disappeared. If I got a message on my talkpage about my "holier than you" attitude, I'd scratch my head and wonder what it was about. If the message was about my "holier than than thou" attitude, I'd get all upset, and rush off to WP:WQA in a tizzy.--Shirt58 (talk) 09:42, 9 December 2010 (UTC) Disclaimer: for educational purposes only - actual event will never happen.

Usage note: Not "thou hasn't disappeared" but rather "thou hast not disappeared". --Trovatore (talk) 09:54, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

¶ I trust that were in jest, sir, for Shirt58 hath not disappearèd, but "thou". Say, rather, “ Not ‘thou hasn't disappeared’, but rather ‘thou hath not disappearèd’ ”. After ten summers and more playing in Renaissance Faires, e'en my small wit doth tell me this. —— Shakescene (talk) 11:02, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

You can't say thou hath not disappeared. You can, of course, say "thou" hath not disappeared. It's the use-mention distinction. --Trovatore (talk) 20:12, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Message to Trovatore and —— Shakescene: your comments have been moved to a WP:ANI discussion here. Crikey dot com dot au, why can't we all just speak Italian?

Hello, I'm the OP. Thank you very much for all your answers. I read the thou article, it's a very good one, I think. I remember meeting "thou" in some of Hawthorne's short stories when people were addressing to something as Mother Nature. Rheims-France---80.236.119.185 (talk) 13:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Mother Nature is ancient, and thou evokes a sense of the ancient. Pfly (talk) 07:21, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Chinese-English chapter translation

I am currently researching the origins of a Buddhist iconographic motif regarding the celestial bird Garuda sitting at the apex of the Buddha's throne. It seems to be prevalent in Tibetan Buddhist art and, strangely enough, in Chinese fiction. I have found that the motif's portrayal in Journey to the west lightly borrows from the Avatamsaka Sutra. The Story of Yue Fei mentions the theme, but my English translation has been redacted. The translator left out these supernatural elements on purpose to give the novel a more realistic feel. In order to see if I notice similarities between Buddhist scriptures and the novel, I need to read the un-redacted version of the first chapter. In Chinese, this chapter is called 天遣赤须龙下界 佛谪金翅鸟降凡. This page has a transcription of it here. If anyone is interested in translating the chapter, please let me know. Thanks. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 19:03, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

This seems like an interesting topic and I'm willing to give it a go. However I can't see to open the link you provided there. Do you mind copying out the text and creating a subpage somewhere, perhaps under your user name? I can then edit that to give a translation. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:50, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I have placed the text in my sandbox. Thank you for the effort. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 23:54, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Azcrostic?

What is the name for a sentence, or passage, that uses the alphabet as its initials? For example, such a sentence may open: 'Any boy can do engineering generally, however....' So far the best suggestion on my own word blog has been 'azcrostic', which I love, but is there a more popular term?58.175.131.253 (talk) 21:17, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

According to the article, this is merely a simple form of Acrostic. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 21:50, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

But the question is what this particular form of acrostic is called. According to Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature [5] it's an abecedarius. EDIT: Just noticed we have a page on it. --Antiquary (talk) 22:04, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

In the Psalm 119 article it's called an "alphabetic acrostic"... AnonMoos (talk) 23:58, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Fair points, Antiquary and AnonMoos: I've added text and a link to the Acrostic article. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 13:17, 6 December 2010 (UTC)