Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 January 26

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January 26

Osibili

Osibili si ergo
Fortibuses inero
Seuatis Enim
Nobili, Demis Cowsendux

Does anyone have any information or insight into who wrote this, whene, where, etc? (Its a silly bilingual pun I suppose) Duomillia 00:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It's quoted in the article Dog Latin as "often taught, as a joke, to English-speaking students of Latin today," and Google Books shows that it was quoted in the 1945 Proceedings of the annual convention of the Association of Highway Officials of the North Atlantic States (I got the date from the Stanford library catalog). Wareh 01:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

About "shall"

A quick question about grammatical moods: in what mood is talk in "He should talk about it with you"? How about in "You should talk about it with him"? I have a feeling that it could be the subjunctive mood or the imperative mood, but I'm not positive. Gracenotes^T § 00:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd just say that you've got an example of the modal auxiliary verb "should." Our article defines this type of helping verb as "an auxiliary verb (or helping verb) that can modify the grammatical mood (or mode) of a verb," which is etymologically sound, but this is a rather fuzzy concept of mood, not the traditional and strict sense of a definitely identifiable form in a given mood, which you apply in your question. (This is why you won't find "should" forms included in the article English verbs: you can fully conjugate an English verb without getting to "he should X.") Examples of subjunctive forms of "talk": "If he talk," "if he talked/were talking." Imperative, of course, is "Talk!" The article auxiliary verb has a better description of words like "should" in your sentence: "They express the speaker's (or listener's) judgement or opinion at the moment of speaking. Some of the modal verbs have been seen as a conditional tense form in English." I wouldn't go beyond that. The American Heritage Book of English Usage makes the distinction clearly: "most of the functions of the old subjunctive have been taken over by auxiliary verbs like may and should, and the subjunctive survives only in very limited situations." Wareh 01:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Or, to summarize: yes, it's subjunctive, not imperative... Wareh is noting a dispute on whether or not anything in English should be considered to be "subjunctive" any more, but in no case is this imperative.--Vyasa Ozsvar 00:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

"Subjunctive" runs the risk of becoming meaninglessly vague unless it keeps some close connection to its historical use to refer to the inflection of verb forms (without modal auxiliaries). So I'd actually say it's not a useful or (in many people's view) correct term to apply to "he should talk." My view is that this phrase is neither subjunctive or imperative, though its meaning may be close to meanings of those moods. (The very fact that both subjunctive and imperative moods can be used as alternatives for some of the same meanings, e.g. prohibition and injunction, to my mind proves that meaning, as opposed to morphology, is not a valid criterion for determining whether something is subjunctive.) Wareh 15:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I agree with you. In form, "You should talk about it with him" seems to be an expression of opinion. The listener might interpret this as a command or at least a strong suggestion, ie. an imperative. However, the syntax of the speaker's words is not governed by the psychological state of the listener. If it had been worded as "If you were to talk about it with him, I think you'd find that ...", then the subjunctive appears. JackofOz 06:36, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Chinese ..Please

I would Like the chinese equivelants for the following Feng Shui related terms :sheng chi - si chi - sha chi .. Thank you 212.138.47.17 02:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

You might want to ask that on the Chinese reference desk. Cheers, Regenspaziergang 07:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Or at the Feng Shui article discussion... 惑乱 分からん 09:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I can tell you if you tell me what these terms mean approximately. Cheers.--K.C. Tang 13:11, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Seu Jorge

Is there anyone with sufficient knowledge of Brazilian Portuguese and the IPA to confirm how Seu Jorge's name is pronounced? I don't speak any, but it seems as if it would be something perhaps close to: [seu ʒɔɾʒ] . If so, it should be added to the article about him. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Brentt4 (talk • contribs) 03:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC).

I think that would be the European pronunciation; the Brazilian pronunciation is probably more like [seu ʒɔχʒi]. —Angr 06:05, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I just asked a Brazilian friend of mine, who said it was ['seʊ 'ʒɔɾʒi]. I asked if the [ɾ] there was the "/r/" phoneme or not (which has a bunch of realizations depending on the place, like [h] or [χ] or whatever), and he said "[ɾ] is the more neutral pronunciation in that position (before a consonant)." --Miskwito 22:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Buuuut my friend now mentioned that "he's [Jorge] from Rio, so he pronounces it ['ʒɔʁʒi] I think". --Miskwito 22:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it starts with a normal S, then there´s that vowel which is like the one in "bed", but not quite. It´s more like the one in "lend". Some pronounciations of "can" are exactly what I mean! Then there´s a normal "oo" like in fool, could, should, boo... That makes Seu. Jorge ought to be more complicated to explain... It starts with a normal J like in Jay. But notest that there´s in Jay another sound before the sound I´m talking about: there´s a D sound which doesn´t apply to Jorge. After you get the J without the D, there is a vowel, the very common sound "ee" (like in bee, pee, see). Now there is the letter "o", which is like in pot, rot, caught, bought, lot. And then there´s the "r" which just doesn´t exist in English... It can be in two accents, and neither one exists in English! Habib is an arab word which at least in Brazil is fairly known (don´t know about the US) and the first sound of this word is one accent of R. It´s not like the Spanish "r". Then there is another time the first two sounds which are in the beginning of the word, i.e., the J without the D and the "ee". A.Z. 20:05, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Swedish to English

I would appreciate getting the following information translated? MY COUNTRY MY LOVE Many Thanks Jack Bennett75.25.19.168 22:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess you mean English to Swedish. Anyway, a translation would be "Mitt land - Min kärlek", (Rough pronunciation: "Mit land, min share-leyk" ("le:k" with a long e, a sound naturally absent in English) ) Note that few Swedes would actually say something like this, though, since it's got rather nationalist overtones. 惑乱 分からん 23:18, 26 January 2007 (UTC)