Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 August 29

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August 29

English to Chinese translation (simplified and wade giles please, pinyin could help) (Mandarin & Cantonese please)

I work at this little wine shop and have a lot of chinese speaking customers, we have a promotion where if you buy any 6 bottles of wines or spirits you may receive 10% off all the items but a nearly all of them believe it must be 6 of the same item, how can i say: "If you buy six or more all of them are 10% off" "any six are 10% off" "you can mix and match" and "they don't have to be the same" I would like to have this written down so they can read it and also in wade giles so that i can say it, i am begining to study chinese but i am far from proficient. So how can you say this in both mandarin and cantonese dialects, especially mandarin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.102.103.253 (talk) 00:01, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

如果买六瓶，各瓶九折。/如果買六瓶,各瓶九折. Ru3guo3 mai3 liu2ping1, ge4ping1 jiu3zhe2. Ru-kuo mai liu-p'ing, kô p'ing jiu cheh. (Interesting fact: Chinese discounts are marked by showing the amount left, not the amount of discount. Where we say 10% off in English, in Chinese, you say 90% left.) This is Mandarin. Written, it's not a problem for Cantonese speakers. Spoken, it might be a little bit abrupt for both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. Steewi (talk) 02:37, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Edit: That means 'If you buy six, each bottle is 10% off.' To say that they don't have to be the same, you can say '不得一样的。' Bu4dei3 yi1yang4 de. I don't know how I'd translate mix and match. Steewi (talk) 02:40, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

各种酒类 任选六瓶 全部九折 -- "all types of alcohol [is there an exclusion for beer here?] -- choose any six bottles -- receive 10% off on all of them. The "all types" and "choose any" is intended to convey the idea that you can choose from any of the varieties. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:20, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

yes exclusion for beer, only wine and hard liquor, no beer or mixers. and i need to be able to stress that it does not have to be 6 bottles of one merlot, or 6 bottles of sky vodka it can be 6 different products, how can i say "it doesn't have to be six of the same"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Troyhungs (talk • contribs) 21:27, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I think "choose any from amongst all varieties" should be clearly enough to the reader - it's the same as "you don't have to choose from any particular type", just expressed positively.

For the avoidance of doubt, maybe: 各种葡萄酒、烈酒 任意搭配 购满六瓶 九折优惠 - "All types of (grape) wine, liquor -- choose any, mix and match -- buy six and receive 10% off". Don't have the time to supply the romanisation - try wiktionary. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:05, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd put up a cartoon of six clearly different bottles in one container. —Tamfang (talk) 05:15, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there a test to determine the number of words in your vocabulary?

It assigns you (say) 1,000 random words from the dictionary and you have to check the ones that you know, then based on that it extrapolates with pretty good accuracy 22,129 or 4,809 or whatever. A number.

Either that, or maybe people have developed IQ-type tests that get harder as you go along, so you don't have to answer as many questions without sacrificing accuracy. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:57, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how accurate that would be. Some people don't test very well. There are also many words that have somewhat intuitive meanings from their morphology and, given some context, can be used and with reasonable proficiency despite not "knowing" the word. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:56, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Ridiculous idea. First, it's not at all clear what "knowing" a word means. Secondly, whatever worthwhile notion is meant by "knowing" a word, this can't merely be assessed by whether somebody declares that he or she knows it or doesn't know it. And thirdly, there are problems of deciding how to count words. Now, if you define both "knowing" (in the context of vocabulary) and the meaning of "word", then we can perhaps envisage some kind of multiple-choice test to determine whether the test subject really knows the most widely used sememe (I suppose) of that word. -- Hoary (talk) 03:26, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

1. A self-test. 2. Like I was thinking of "should bottle and bottled count as 1 or 2"?. (I dunno.) Or are & is? (I'm not a grammatician, it's 2) I suppose there would be several numbers based on stricter and looser rulesets of what's a word. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 05:40, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried typing vocabulary test into Google? Matt Deres (talk) 03:52, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

That's all [incommodious] SAT stuff. I'm not wading through that to find some social quiz trading site that says: I know x out of 43 of some words that gives me no indication of why those words are a useful sample of words to use (such as a random sample of an unabridged dictionary) and how I can get a number out of this Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 05:40, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

You've got a decidely belligerent attitude, given that you're the one that asked the question. I've seen references to studies, here and there, that say that our "working" vocabulary tends to be a lot smaller than our total vocabulary. That is, we might "recognize" a word like perspicacious, and know what it means, but that doesn't mean we're likely to actually use it. So the first issue is, you need to define exactly what you mean by "the number of words in your vocabulary", and see where that leads. Meanwhile, pick up the latest Reader's Digest and see how well you do in their regular "Word Power" feature. That's a good start. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 06:33, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

There's a problem to start with-- what's a word?

'Roof' is a word, 'top' is a word, 'rooftop' is a word-- but is 'rooftop garden' a word? And what of neologisms? I can invent the word 'mycoclast' meaning 'one who breaks mushrooms', and anyone with a knowledge of Greek roots and suffixes can understand it; does that make it a valid word? Is 'swimming' a sparate word from 'to swim'?

This isn't just idle speculation-- it's a problem that preocuppies linguists, lexicographers and taxonomists, with no clear answer.Rhinoracer (talk) 10:25, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, if a person knows 60 out of 100 words in a sampled list, can we extrapolate from that and say the person has a such-and-such chance of knowing more than 600 words out of 1000 words in a bigger sampled list? Do such lists or tests exist? --211.53.226.137 (talk) 12:15, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

sidetrack

If you want to look at this from the other end and get rather frustrated in the process, try naming what the OED calls the hundred most commonly-used words in English. Although everyone knows them, I've never been able to name all 100 at one go within the 12-minute time limit of this quiz in dozens of tries. http://www.sporcle.com/games/common_english_words.php —— Shakescene (talk) 19:40, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Delta

Is it true that the uppercase delta in the Greek alphabet has a thicker edge at the top right side?--Mikespedia (talk) 04:26, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I would guess this more a font design aesthetic choice, just as the right side of a capital "A" tends to be thicker in many of fonts, but it wouldn't be incorrect to render it differently. Rckrone (talk) 04:38, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

That would just be natural for many letters in most alphabets that are carved with a chisel or written with a broad pen whose base is thicker than the width of the blade or nib. Used normally, a right-downwards stroke would usually carry the full base of the nib, while a stroke in the left-upwards direction would only use the width. For example, look at the capital A or V in the Western alphabet or capital Alpha or Lambda in the Greek alphabet. Or take a felt-tip pen ("Magic Marker"^TM ) with a square-cut (not round) tip and try for yourself. Many type-faces (fonts) derive from such written models, but some sans-serif fonts and "typewriter" fonts (like Courier) have even stress on horizontal lines, vertical lines and diagonal lines in both directions (an analogy would be writing with a ball-point or rollerball pen.) In such typefaces, capital Delta looks more like a geometric triangle. —— Shakescene (talk) 09:18, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the previous two respondents that it depends on the typeface, as the image to the right shows. +Angr 09:40, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, and different typefaces will have gone in and out of fashion over the many years the Greek alphabet has been used (there will also be variations between places, purposes and even individuals). --Tango (talk) 22:05, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

A similar symbol, without differences in line-weight (thickness), might be an abbreviation for "triangle" or "equilateral triangle" in some contexts. So if other letters in a text do vary the widths of their strokes (especially A, V, M, N, etc.), and especially if other Greek letters show such variation, it might be worth checking if what looks like capital Delta also does. But if that's the only Greek letter in your text, and it shows no variation in line-weight, then you have to watch out, because few Roman alphabets include similar Greek letters; they're often either drawn differently (sometimes deliberately to distinguish them from related Roman letters) or taken from another (often specialised) font or typeface that might use equal line-weights. —— Shakescene (talk) 05:56, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure how useful this is to add, but most typefaces with variable width strokes are done so as if drawn by a right-handed draughtsperson (as was implied above). In the days before computer typography, it was common in "penalty copy" (maths etc.) for the compositor not to have every symbol available in every font of a typeface, so the compositor would substitute one from another typeface. See Donald E. Knuth, "Mathematical Typography", reprinted in anthology of Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia, Vol. 5 (or 6?), 1974 if I recall off the top of my head (it's at work and I'm not likely to be for some time, but that may give you enough to find it elsewhere). SimonTrew (talk) 00:50, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Unions et descendance

Les unions de Bagrat V sont étroitement liées aux évênements de son règne.

1) en 1661 fiancé à Zira fille de Léon II prince de Mingrélie,

2) en 1661 Kétévan fille de David Ier de Mukhran dont il divorce en 1661.

3) en 1661 Titia fille de Constantin Ier de Mukhran dont il divorce en 1663,

• Marie morte en 1726
• Daredjan mariée en 1677 avec Georges III Gouriéli

4) en 1663 Thamar soeur de Titia, autre fille de Constantin Ier de Mukhran qu'il enlève à Léon III de Mingrélie (Lévant III Dadiani) et dont il doit divorcer en 1678.

• Georges né en 1676 mort jeune.
• Tinatin né en 1678, religieuse dès 1704 morte vers 1724.

5) en 1679 de nouveau avec Thamar fille de Constantin Ier de Mukhran. Une fois veuve Thamar se remarie dès 1683 avec Georges III Gouriéli qui divorce de la princesse Daredjan fille de Bagrat V. Thamar meurt en couche la même année

D'une concubine il avait eu un fils illégitime:

• Alexandre IV d’Iméréthie.

This is a messed up family. This translation gives the gist of the text, but the style is stilted and I can't be bothered. Also, I didn't translate the names.

The marriages of Bagrat V are closely related to the events of his reign.

• In 1661, he was betrothed to Zira, daughter of Leon II, the prince de Mingrélie.
• In 1661, he married Kétévan, daughter of David I of Mukhran; they divorced in 1661.
• In 1661, he married Titia, daughter of Constantin I of Mukhran; they divorced in 1663
  • Marie, died 1726
  • Daredjan, married Georges III Gouriéli in 1677.
• In 1663, he married Thamar, sister of Titia, also a daughter of Constantin I of Mukhran who he had taken from Leon III of Mingrélie (Lévant III Dadiani); they divorced in 1678.
  • Georges, born in 1676; died young.
  • Tinatin, born in 1678, joined convent 1704; died ca. 1724.
• Also in 1679, he married Thamar, daughter of Constantin I of Mukhran. When Bagrat V died, she married Georges III Gouriéli in 1683 who had divorced Princess Daredjan, daughter of Bagrat V. Thamar died in childbirth the same year. From a concubine, he had an illegitimate son:
  • Alexandre IV of Iméréthie.

169.231.32.17 (talk) 07:57, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Is this Bagrat V of Imereti? Nyttend (talk) 03:04, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Rothschild

Keeping with the French connection with the previous question, how would this name, Rothschild, be pronounced in Parisian French? IPA is good if you know it. Thanks in advance, 169.231.32.17 (talk) 07:44, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Probably something like [ʁɔt'ʃild]. An actual Parisian might correct me though. — Kpalion^(talk) 08:58, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Rot-shield, with a long "o" and the stess on the first syllable. Rhinoracer (talk) 10:27, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

And if you like, you can hear it here [1] with French, German and American pronounce. --pma (talk) 10:33, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

While I've yet to produce an audible sound from that forvo site (where that screen display has "English" without distinguishing British from American), I offer testimony that in the 60s/70s U.S.A. I only heard the name pronounced "ROTHS-child" – and only many years later (in Israel, where many people know one or several European languages) discovered it's more likely to be ROT-sheeld ("red shield"?). -- Deborahjay (talk) 12:46, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Please check if your computer has speakers. Anyway, the OP asks explicitly for the Parisian pronounce, and the link I provided has indeed 3 good samples of pronounce from Paris (look, it has a cute world map with small flags for the place of origin of each pronounce, there's one from the US, one from Germany, one fron Canada...). Unfortunately there is not the whole world population... sorry :) --pma (talk) 14:16, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Speakers are not the problem, they use a funny Javascript or some such which does not work in all browsers. For the record, I can't produce an audible sound from Forvo in Firefox (3.0.1), but it works fine in Opera (9.27) and Konqueror (3.5.8). — Emil J. 14:53, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

The particular U.S. pronunciation came from a cast recording of Cole Porter's musical comedy Can-Can, either from the 1953 stage version or the soundtrack of the 1960 film version. I've been wondering for some time whether it's a peculiarly American mistake, similar to numerous others based on a widespread American ignorance (and/or ignoring) of foreign orthographies (i.e. that "sch" is the German representation of the sound [ʃ]). -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:11, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

There are similar cases. Louis Moreau Gottschalk's surname is usually pronounced /gotts-chawk/, rather than the probably more correct /gott-shalk/. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:30, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Home of the Rothschild family, a major banking family in the Ghetto.

And now for the ubiquitous WP:trivia: The family seems to have gained its name from the fact that there was a red shield (red = rot in German / spelled roth until the reform in 1900) outside their house in the Frankfurt ghetto. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 15:07, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Can I ask is the pronounciation "roffs-child" correct in any language?83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:55, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

In Russian, words from other languages that contain the -th- sound are sometimes rendered as -f-, e.g. Marfa for Martha, Feodor/Fyodor for Theodore, etc., but I believe the word in question would be pronounced Rot-shild rather than Roff-shild. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:30, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I think it's mainly words borrowed from Greek in past centuries that show that correspondence... AnonMoos (talk) 18:24, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Will Cantonese go extinct eventually?

I returned to Canton a few years ago and found that Mandarin had already replaced the native tongue in Guangzhou. I've heard that the same thing is happening in Hong Kong. What will keep Mandarin from assmilating all? 98.14.223.69 (talk) 12:56, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

The two will probably co-exist for a long time. Hong Kong is primarily a tradie-based economy, key to which is the very large,active and educated Cantonese-speaking diaspora. This alone will preserve Cantonese's usefulness.

We can look at other examples where an established tongue was seemingly swamped by a dominant "invader": French in Quebec, and Spanish in Florida. Neither has disappeared after the influx of English. In fact, they are prospering.

Multilingualism is often the happy result. Take the Philippines; It is not at all uncommon to find fluent speakers of four separate tongues:Tagalog, Spanish, English and a local tongue or dialect.

Besides, think how satisfying it is for two Cantonese to be able to chat away in a café, without some nosy Beijing busybody at the next table understanding them.

(Guangzhou is a bit of a special case, isn't it, given the colossal immigration from Mandarin-speaking regions in recent years.) Rhinoracer (talk) 13:50, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Spanish in Florida is reintroduced from the Caribbean, not from the original inhabitants. However, your point does hold with the Spanish in New Mexico. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 19:02, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

question plus a plea

The question http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Entertainment#When_Hannah_Montana_Will_End note my interpretation - not necessarily what was meant made me wonder if there is a name for a question that includes a sort of plea

eg "When will men live in peace?" , "When will I be rich?" etc

It seems vaguely rhetorical - is there a special name?83.100.250.79 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:42, 29 August 2009 (UTC).

Entreaty, I'd say. More prosaically, what you're describing is a request placed in interrogative form. -Silence (talk) 21:45, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

A prayer, of sorts. Not in the Hannah Montana case, though. That was just poor wording on the part of the OP. This kind of rhetorical question: "I been cheated / Been mistreated / When will I be loved?" From the Everloving, er, Everly Brothers. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 21:48, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

To me, "When, oh when, will Hannah Montana end?" sounds like a perfecly reasonable entreaty/lament/complaint. And, of course, there may be a purposeful ambiguity between complaint and entreaty, as in Henry II's (reported) "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" To answer the OP's question, there is an obscure rhetorical term that seems to cover the sort of usage you have in mind—mempsis, which Richard Lanham's Handlist of Rhetorical Terms defines as "complaining against injuries and pleading for help," giving as an example the beginning of Psalm 13: "How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?" No article about the term here or entry in Wiktionary, though. Deor (talk) 23:04, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I almost missed your post being hidden in the middle , mempsis is a term I've heard before but forgotten - maybe it could be added to figures of speech by someone with more knowledge than me? I'll leave a note on the talk page anyway.83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:53, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

A prayer is usually directed toward a deity or supernatural power, though. Entreaties, more generally, allow the question to be directed toward anyone — or perhaps even no one (cf. rhetorical question). Though prayer and entreaty may both be too general, since neither needs to be phrased interrogatively ("Please help me!"). -Silence (talk) 21:53, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I would call those kind of questions "rhetorical questions" (I don't know of a name for that specific type of rhetorical question). "Loaded questions" and "leading questions" are vaguely similar concepts. --Tango (talk) 22:03, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

"Please, please live in peace" is also an entreaty (or plea) I think. No single word for an entreaty phrased as a question (interrogative as mentioned above), I wondered perhaps some specialised greek or latin origin term relating to debating techniques? Or something like "appeal to ...." ?

Thanks anyway, so far. I tried figure of speech but the nearest I found was Anacoenosis.

More specifically what about if an actor is addressing an audience - perhaps there is a special term for the technique the playright has used? (specifically in terms of the child like simplicity of the request) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:36, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

The term is soliloquy, at least if the actor is addressing the audience in a confessional style. Though if it's addressing the audience as an audience, it's breaking the fourth wall. -Silence (talk) 21:07, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Way back when, a couple of my teachers liked to use the Latin phrase "Quousque tandem ...?" when one or some of us had nearly exhausted their patience. It's the beginning of Cicero's rhetorical question "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?", and my teachers most certainly also meant it as a plea. Those two initial words have become a phrase in their own right, and the continuation ("... abutere, ...") was only ever quoted by my Latin teacher. I may have even seen "Quousque tandem" used as a synonym for this kind of rhetorical question and plea, at least in German, but I found no actual example online. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:53, 1 September 2009 (UTC)