Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 May 29

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May 29

Are the verbs "to ascertain" and "to determine" complete synonyms?

Are the verbs "to ascertain" and "to determine" complete synonyms (used in the sense of seeking and discovering something - I know that "to determine" can also mean to cause something to happen in a particular way)? Often things which are almost synonyms have some subtle shade of meaning, is that the case here? -- Q Chris (talk) 14:15, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

"To determine" can also mean "to bring to an end", from Latin de of, from and terminare to finish. 87.81.147.76 (talk) 14:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

IMHO there is a subtle semantic difference: "acertain" is to discover external/objective information, while "determine" could mean to declare/define something. "The court, having acertained that the accused was not at the bank at the time of the robbery, determined that all charges were to be dropped." Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:53, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I think the OP is asking about the difference between ascertain and sense 4 (only) of determine. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:01, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Even so, User:Mandruss, to avoid possible ambiguity when writing for a readership that nowadays is increasingly likely to include non-native speakers, it's advisable to choose the word with fewer alternate definitions, thus minimizing the risk of a misreading. -- Deborahjay (talk) 08:38, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

@Deborahjay: I don't necessarily disagree with you on that point. But the OP didn't say anything to indicate they are talking about Wikipedia editing, and, in fact, most of the questions at the Reference Desks are unrelated to Wikipedia.

Anyway, and just because I can't resist a good conversation, I'm not convinced it serves non-native speakers to insulate them from common native English usage. Sense 4 of "determine" isn't going away any time soon, so the non-native speaker is going to be exposed to it somewhere, whether at Wikipedia or elsewhere. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:48, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

How about an answer to the OP's question? Yes, as far as I am concerned they are exact synonyms. "Establish" is also synonymous. --Viennese Waltz 09:14, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Examples in the above discussion indicate that "ascertain" and "establish" work well as synonyms. I still contend that the use of "determine" would require careful wording of context so that it couldn't be misconstrued as having another of its transitive-verbal meanings, namely "to decide." -- Deborahjay (talk) 12:10, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Haček in an American spelling bee?

I saw an article [1] which claimed that the Scripps National Spelling Bee used a sentence to provide context, "The priest, philosopher and reformer Jan Hus introduced the haček into Czech orthography." By their bolding I presume that haček was the word to be spelled.

What confuses me is that I don't recognize "haček" as an English word, because I don't see č as an English letter, because it has, well, a haček over it. I have no idea how you would say that letter in a spelling bee. I see Wiktionary lists wikt:hacek as an 'alternate spelling', though.

Anyway, I was kind of curious whether such strange letters have become valid in English spelling, or spelling competitions; or alternatively, whether they accept the stripping of any and all special marks and simply the recitation of the closest-looking English letter. Or did they use the alternate spelling as a loophole, and avoid such questions where one isn't present?

Incidentally, our article on č doesn't say how it is spelled out aloud. Wnt (talk) 14:55, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually it's an English word. At least so think Oxford, Collins and MW. By the way, Hus did not invent háček but a dot above for Czech (nevertheless a dot as a diacritic had long existed before him).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:51, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• The haček itself is the little hat, caron, over the Latin letter. It also appears over other letters like s and z. The symbol 'č' is called 'cee haček' when said aloud. The letter is actually part of my family name. I've always considered it an English word in the way that salsa, haggis, and sigma are English words. I've also seen the word spelt haczek (the Polish spelling) when the č symbol itself was not available. μηδείς (talk) 18:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• If it's an English word, when will the makers of Scrabble be introducing the tile marked Č? Or, for that matter, the tiles marked Á, À, Â, Ä, Ǎ, Ă, Ā, Ã, Å, Ą, Æ, Ǣ, ........ Ź, Ż and Ž? And, more importantly, what will their letter values be, given that they're used rather less often than the diacritic-free versions? Or, to put it another way, how can an English word contain characters that are not recognised - anywhere - as part of the English alphabet and English language? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:39, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Garcon! μηδείς (talk) 22:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

... noun, plural garçons [gar-sawn] (Show IPA). French -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:49, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I expected this response (hence my parenthetical comment), but, jalapeño, façade, naïve, and dejà vu are all perfectly english expressions, as are coöperate, and fiancée. We simply do without the symbols when practicality demands, yet the symbols still have English names. I am also sure the children are provided with the rules, whatever they are, and are coached in the contest; not swept off the streets and plopped in the beehive. The fact that some keyboards don't have certain symbols doesn't mean the symbols are in themselves problematic. The custom when you and I were young was for typists to add such symbols by hand when necessary. If English is limited to what 4th graders are expected to be able to parse, then Shakespeare isn't English either. μηδείς (talk) 05:28, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I am all in favor of expanding the confines of the English language to include commonly used words written with non-English diacritical marks, including the six words mentioned above. That should be based on common understanding and widespread usage by literate English language writers. But those six words mentioned above are widely accepted and commonly rendered and understood in English with or without the diacritical marks. I do not believe that the "hacek" word has yet achieved that status. I would certainly have no idea at all what was meant if I encountered it in an English sentence lacking strong context, though I would have no problem whatsoever with the other six words mentioned, with or without the diacritics. So, language evolves and opinions may vary, but I do not at this time recognize "hacek" or "haček" as standard English at this time. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:50, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Interestingly, the very names of the country and language whence the word originates, Czechoslovakia (as it was then) and Czech, are rendered in English using Polish (!) orthography, because Čechoslovakia would have had little or no chance of being understood or pronounced correctly. The haček would have been dropped, and the Cecho part would have been pronounced like "Setcho". So much for acceptance of hačeks in English. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:51, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I think Chekoslovakia would have been the likely outcome, Jack. But no such thing as Czechoslovakia existed before WWI, nor very long after the end of the Cold War. The haček was around quite a bit before that. μηδείς (talk) 20:24, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I suppose an interesting case is "habañero", which is certainly not a word in any language other than English. Still, my feeling is that User:Medeis' test cases can be gone through and addressed in different ways. To begin with, coöperate and naïve are genuinely English spelling, though I would say archaic spelling; the article Diaeresis (diacritic) says that this notation is the only case of English terms with diacritical marks. Because of how diaresis is defined, there is never a doubt that it sits atop an English letter like o or i. As for "facade", "fiancee", and "deja vu", I would say that these words are or would be English when they lack diacritics and are not italicized, but foreign when those two things are done. (Though it's not very clear to me that deja vu is accepted as English the way facade is) Which leaves us with the pesky ñ - except in very old borrowings like "canyon" people don't really feel comfortable, for reasons I don't understand, with the idea of replacing it with "ny" or "ni", yet rarely can reproduce the letter in print or are minded to. And yet... I feel like these words aren't always italicized either. So that's the most interesting case of the six. Wnt (talk) 10:56, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I have also seen diaresis used in words such as reëmergent, Wnt, which spellcheck is happy to take as reemergent, the latter looking like a term for a gent who reems. μηδείς (talk) 01:27, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

You also see role spelled with a circumflex, as in rôle. See here for example. --Jayron32 16:16, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

That, and début, première and various others bespeak confusion and/or snobbishness. Rôle, début, première et various al have all been absorbed into English to produce the very fine English words role, debut and premiere, which are written without diacritics. They are all available free of charge, and there is simply no case to use any French words or French orthography in an otherwise English-language text, unless the text is actually about how certain French words are the origin/source of English words (in which case the French words must be italicised). Or unless English simply has no word or expression of its own to call upon. For example, déja vu is clearly a French expression. It has been borrowed by English speakers because we have been too lazy or too unimaginative to develop one of our own. Just because it's widely used in English-language contexts does not mean it is an English expression. It remains French, and should be italicised in writing. Maybe one day it will be reborn as the English expression "deja vu" (without the acute é), but that hasn't happened yet. To consider it an English expression would be like considering перестройка an English word. Well, hardly. Not even its usual romanization, perestroika, is an English word. Acutes, graves, circumflexes and cedillas are just as foreign to English as Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Chinese or Japanese script. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:18, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

By the way, déjà vu also takes a diacritic on the "a" in French. One more reason to spell it "deja vu" in English... --Xuxl (talk) 14:49, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Jack, Czech is actually the original Old Czech spelling. It's just Poles who retained the old digraph. I cannot confirm when the name entered English.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:45, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:18, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

To address Cullen and Jack above, yes, haček is a relatively rare word, used mainly by linguists in English, as well as ethnically and liturgically, typically by Slavs who use the Latin alphabet. I'd expect it to be marked as such in an English dictionary, given fewer than 1% of native English speakers are likely familiar with it (or with the term. Ultimately, what matters with the spelling bee is their rules and the words they defined as canonical. Learning the names of various accent marks is indeed a part of standard grade school education for native speakers. Reading poetry and Shakespeare requires understanding a markèd accent. Luckfully, never having been ruled by Napoleon, we English speakers don't feel the need to codify our speech before we just get on with it. μηδείς (talk) 20:24, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

French spelling was codified well before Napoléon, though. But his name is diacriticized (is that a word?) --Xuxl (talk) 14:52, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

England has been always too backward comparing to France, this why the English never came to the progressive idea of a language institution like l’Académie. (Joke.) --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:36, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Napoleon lost the right to use the accent at Waterloo, Xuxl. μηδείς (talk) 18:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

My name is Fritz Jörn (or Joern where no ö is available, as in my e-mail address). I like the English alhabet: no nonsense, just characters, no diacritical signs. Ideal for sorting, say in phone books. In Germany my little ö is sorted as o or – in phone books – as oe (in Austria behind oz). The ß as in Straße, street, becomes ss. A mess, see here under German. In Sweden ö comes after z, thus no foreigner finds it.
 I can only suggest: Americans, declare a word to be English or not, but stick to your simple alphabet! Your spelling is hard enough to learn (vs. for example Italian).
 To the hacek. You can produce an ` and an ´ on the keyboard (on yours too, I think), a ~, but no hacek, not even a circumflex. Another good reason to leave it off. In German, despite a recent spelling reform, we too don’t have a character for the sound of č, we use tsch instead (we spell Hatschek). We still use the triphraph sch for the phonetic ​[⁠ʃ⁠]​, as in English until the late 15th century, now replaced by sh (exception: British pronunciation of schedule, and of chourse schnapps). It all dates back to the Romans, who didn’t have ​[⁠ʃ⁠], not in their 22 simple characters: » … in Latin scientia "science" was pronounced /sk/, but has shifted to /ʃ/ in Italian scienza.« – Fritz Jörn (talk) 07:41, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

References

Are you supposed to type one space or two spaces, after a period?

Are you supposed to type one space or two, after a period? Does Wikipedia have an article on this topic? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

It has a rather terrible article on it, called sentence spacing, in my opinion written with an agenda. --Trovatore (talk) 15:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

That's not the correct article, is it? Isn't that an article about the distinction between, say, single-spacing and double-spacing and triple-spacing, etc., lines of text? That refers to how much space there is vertically from one line to the next. I am asking about typing a single space (blank) character or two space (blank) characters after I type a period at the end of a sentence. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:32, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

That is the correct article. I'd have to read the whole of it to understand why it jumps from spacing the lines of text to the number of spaces between sentences, but for your purpose you can jump straight to the applicable sections #Digital age and #Controversy.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 29, 2015; 16:44 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I'll check it out. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 18:14, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

For Wikipedia articles, see WP:MOS#Periods (full stops) and spaces and WP:MOS#Spaces following terminal punctuation.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:49, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd like to read a "main space" article on the topic. Not a Wikipedia MOS (Manual of Style) guidebook. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:37, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Wars have been fought over this exact subject. You'd do best to back out the way you came in, and pretend like you didn't ask. Otherwise, you're liable to get caught in the crossfire. --Jayron32 16:04, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• My mother was a professional typist, and was taught two spaces after a full stop at the end of a sentence. This is what I was taught in the Eighties, and what I do myself. Certain modern word processing program-programmers have decided we are too stupid to make this decision on our own, and they override or "correct" what the user does. μηδείς (talk) 18:48, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

When I first was taught to touch type in 1973, I was taught two spaces after a full stop and also after a colon. Then in 1983 I went to secretarial school, and we were still taught two spaces after a full stop. However, in 1993 I was teaching word processing in an FE college, and in the meantime the RSA had changed its standards to only one space after a full stop and a colon. (UK) --TammyMoet (talk) 21:36, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Where I come from, the standard was 2. I never saw 1 until I started looking at Wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:00, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

And I don't think I've ever heard about using two spaces before I read this thread. - Lindert (talk) 11:48, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

An actually answer is that it depends on which style guide you are using. Both MLA style and Chicago Style Manual prefer single. Mingmingla (talk) 16:07, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, all. I later realized that my question wasn't particularly clear. I was not asking: "Are you supposed to type one space or two, after a period?" What I was asking was: "Does Wikipedia have an article on the topic of whether you are supposed to type one space or two after a period?" Sorry for the poorly phrased question. Thanks. Since this is such a "big deal", I thought that Wikipedia would have an article on it. That is, a specific article, dedicated to this exact topic / "controversy". Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:06, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

The two spaces might have been more of a thing when all we had was typewriter fonts. With better computer fonts, the two-space approach looks somewhat overkill. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:03, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

That does seem to be the story that you hear, but it makes no sense to me. The function of a period is to help you find breaks between sentences. As far as I can tell, a period and a single space works better for that in monospace fonts (the typewriter-style ones) than it does in proportional fonts (the more modern ones). In proportional fonts, the periods have a habit of cuddling up against the last letter of the sentence and kind of getting lost, so a wide space seems even more important.

There's a very nice solution for this in the typesetting package LaTeX (actually I think it's the same in plain TeX). In LaTeX, it will put a wide space after a terminal punctuation mark (period or question mark or exclamation mark). Exactly how wide that is depends on other exigencies (like what's necessary to keep the text right-justified) but in general it's wider than a full space, but not as wide as two spaces.

The best thing of all is that if you don't want the wide space in a particular spot (say, if the period ends an abbreviation rather than a sentence), you can easily suppress the wide space in that location. --Trovatore (talk) 22:24, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Proportional or not, extra space after a sentence can help the reader tell whether the dot ends a sentence or an abbreviation. ("During my time in the U.K. I made a driving blunder or two.") — My last typewriter had a half-space key, so I used a space and a half between sentences. —Tamfang (talk) 06:12, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

But you should not be writing "U.K." anyway, you should be writing "UK". --Viennese Waltz 07:33, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

As a general rule, Americans are more likely to use abbreviations with periods, Brits without. I have actually been drifting towards the British style, partly because it's just easier to type, but also, Tamfang is right: If you use a single space after terminal punctuation, then it does become more difficult to distinguish terminal punctuation from abbreviations, using the American style. So if this (in my view unfortunate) trend towards a normal space after terminal punctuation is really here to stay, then that's a strong point in favor of transitioning to British-style abbreviations.

Again, LaTeX does this very nicely, though it does require a tiny bit of effort on the part of the author. When I want to use a period to end a sentence, I just type normally — one space or two, or seventeen, makes no difference; the engine will choose a wide space that's usually sufficient to mark the sentence break, while maintaining pleasing spaces in other ways.

But if I want to use an abbreviation followed by a period, Mr. or Dr. or what have you, I follow it immediately by a backslash-space, and the engine knows that the sentence is continuing and adjusts accordingly. --Trovatore (talk) 18:22, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

• Some say, and I find reasonable, that an abbreviation gets a dot if it does not include the last letter of the original word: thus for St(reet) but not for S(ain)t — example chosen with tongue in cheek. —Tamfang (talk) 04:03, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Off-color, off-topic joke.

If a woman is involved, I find it best to give her as much space as possible, following a period. StuRat (talk) 23:03, 30 May 2015 (UTC) This type of comment is an example of the systemic hostility that women editors experience here. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:54, 31 May 2015 (UTC) Opinions will vary among both men and women. The opposing viewpoint is that such things shouldn't be taken too seriously, and that the trend toward being offended by more and more things is bad for society. This viewpoint is held by many women as well as men. Anyone claiming to know how the majority of either gender would feel about it is full of shit, unless they care to cite some peer-reviewed study that clearly supports them. What breaks this stalemate is that Stu's one-liner does nothing to answer the OP's question. In other words, I'd avoid humor that's both potentially offensive to some (I'm sure Stu is astute enough to know that) and off topic, as it's a net negative. I haven't seen such comments to be a pattern for Stu, so I'm guessing it was a slip of the fingers and he would refrain if he had it to do over. 2¢ ―Mandruss ☎ 07:11, 31 May 2015 (UTC) The remark in question falls into a subset of "jokes about behavior associated with exclusively female reproductive physiological processes" that are arguably delivered and received differently depending on the sex/gender of the jokester and audience. As a "woman editor...here" I suggest we consider why we see few if any jokes of a parallel subset ridiculing cisgender males' organs, processes, and associated effects. Perhaps it's related to the accepted (?) fact that Wikipedia participation is predominantly a male enterprise, and guys can dish it out better than they can take it while not particularly considering or caring how women take it? Unfortunately I lack any citation of such a comprehensive study with definitive findings as @Mandruss would require. Meanwhile we may consider the mood on the virtual street, as expressed in many topics and responses on social media networks, discussing the more innocuous elements associated with what feminists call rape culture. --Deborahjay (talk) 11:55, 1 June 2015 (UTC)-- That remark reflects the tastelessness that is sometimes present on Wikipedia. It's unfortunate that it appeared on such a public page rather than on a user talk page. Liz Read! Talk! 17:03, 1 June 2015 (UTC) Further discussed on the talk page. -- ToE 17:32, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:18, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Look at a book, made for reading: one normal space. But: justification "spoils" everything anyway. So I suggest modern typing, one space only – and one space before and after a dash. – Fritz Jörn (talk) 08:10, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

"Cogenidad"?

A friend got a report after an ultrasound that included the comment "baja cogenidad". So far as I can tell, "cogenidad" doesn't exist anywhere on the internet. Can anyone think of a word for which it might be a misspelling (in Spanish)? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Medeis (talk • contribs) 18:33, 29 May 2015

• We figured out it meant "low echogenicity" (ecogenidad) which makes sense given the procedure. μηδείς (talk) 20:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Resolved