Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 August 1

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August 1

Helviti and Helvetii

Is helviti, the Old Norse word for hell, a cognate of Helveti, the name of the ancient Swiss tribe? Did the Vikings call Switzerland hell? NeonMerlin 05:49, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

A quick check of Helvetii and Hell indicates the words are unrelated. The Vikings probably never came close to Switzerland, unless they took their longboats up the Rhine. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 06:10, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

At the bottom of this thread, a contributor called Franz Gnaedinger speculates that the words are related -- quote: The keltoi Celts were miners, the Gallii, and the Celtic tribe called Helvetii. In all those names I recognize KAL for the Underworld, caves, mines, cavities in the ground where the precious metals are found. The reliability of the contributor has been questioned elsewhere, however. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 12:09, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Even as a casual Usenet user I know he's widely known as an internet troll, a.k.a. "grapheus" and "J. Fauconeau". No such user (talk) 06:45, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Learn Language.

Hi,

can i learn French by wikipeida?.

Thank, Aasharam —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.227.4.82 (talk) 07:23, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

No, but you may be able to learn it from Wikibooks; see b:French/Contents. Personally, I'd recommend a course in-person with a teacher who's a native speaker, though, followed up by a stay of at least several weeks in a French-speaking country. But the Wikibooks course is free. +Angr 07:54, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is indeed a good resource, but probably you cannot learn a language from it. For learning a language, you need to practice all four skills listening, reading, writing and speaking. Systematic drills, practice exercises, oral and aural skills development are missing part here. You cannot learn a language just be reading its grammar. So, use wikipedia (french edition), wikisource or wikibooks just as a secondary resource for a lot of reading and vocabulary building. If you intend to learn the French on your own, it is indeed possible and done on a regular basis. There are several programs available for this purpose, such as, Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, Rosetta Stone, FSI (free), Assimil, French in Action, Teach yourself French etc, or some website such as livemocha, trymango etc, all of which have their own unique approach to make you go headway into the language and they are indeed very effective as they are designed just for this very purpose of language learning unlike Wikipedia. You can consult this online forum for further help, [1]. Hope this helps. Make sure you practice every day. Good luck. - DSachan (talk) 08:04, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

One very useful feature of Wikipedia is the box on the left hand side of the page, titled "languages". When you look up a word in a dictionary, you may be misled because words often have several meanings, that are translated differently. If there's a word in your own language that you're uncertain about how to translate, check if it has a Wikipedia article in your language, and see if there is a French version of the article. That way, you can make sure you are using the correct word, if your dictionary offers several alternatives. Take a word like "folder", for example, which can have several meanings, and let's say that you are thinking about the folders of a file system. First go to the disambiguation page "Folder", which takes you to "Folder (computing)". Then follow the link to the French article, called "fr:Répertoire (informatique)". Googling a foreign word is also a good way to make sure you have understood its meaning. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 11:50, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia languages

I hope this is the right place to post my question. We all now that Wikipedia has versions in a lot of languages. I'm wondering: what are the principal languages lacking their own Wiki? The word principal is probably misleading. I'm just curious about what languages one would expect to find but for some reason have't already a place in the Wiki family. For example, I was quite surprised that Ancient Greek didn't have its own translation. Another little trivia: I was instead surprised to find languages such as Moldovan and Serbocroatian (no racism intended, I hope not to offend anyone, it's just my stupidpersonal opinion). --151.51.46.33 (talk) 14:20, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is written by human, living volunteers. Your observation illustrates the fact that the number of people who speak Moldovan and Serbocroatian is greater than the number who speak Ancient Greek. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 15:46, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I assume this is a question about official wikipedia languages, as mentioned above there will a bias towards living languages, as the primary aim of an encyclopaedia is to provide knowledge, rather than an academic aid or teaching project.

There was a discussion here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Ancient_Greek, see also http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy eligibility 4.

However there's no reason why a wiki shouldn't exist, such as http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hēafodsīde (which seems a little contradictory, considering ancient greek was rejected).

As for serbo-croat, and moldovan - it only takes one person to start the project.. I'm suprised you're suprised - there are quite a few moldovans.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:35, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Back to the main question : there is a list here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikipedias , hopefully someone can use that list to point out what is missing.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:40, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Some of the inconsistencies are due to changes in policy. At first languages were created pretty freely, eventually some rules were established by they weren't applied retroactively. That means there are some languages that exist now that wouldn't be created if proposed now. --Tango (talk) 20:44, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I do find it slightly amusing that we have a WP in English, in simple English, in Norman, in Scots, in Old English, in Irish, in Manx, in Cornish, in Scottish Gaelic (and I may have missed some more) whilst no dedicated USian jingoist linguist has proposed a dedicated US American Wikipedia. Based on the confusion caused by the recent public oral performance by Ms Sarah Palin I am inclined to call this an incomprehensible language to speakers of the Queen's English. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:36, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I think OP may have been surprised to find Moldovan and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias not because they think these languages are spoken by few people, but because their very existence is questionable – more political than linguistic. Are Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian separate languages or one Serbo-Croatian languge, written in Latin and Cyrillic alphabets? Hard to tell, so, just in case, we have a Serbian Wikipedia (Cyrillic), a Croatian Wikipedia (Latin), a Bosnian Wikipedia (Latin), and a Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia (Latin and Cyrillic). Moldovan is basically the same language as Romanian, which is written in the Latin alphabet in both Romania and Moldova, except Transnistria where they write it in the Cyrillic. Actually, Moldovan Wikipedia (Cyrillic) has been closed and now the only Wikipedia in Romanian is Romanian Wikipedia (Latin). — Kpalion^(talk) 23:10, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (and soon-coming the so-called "Montengerin language" which is currently in the process of forging) are linguistically one language - the Neoštokavian dialect. They have 99% identical grammar, having identical phonology, accentuation (extremely complex with lexical tones and mobility), and some 99% of inflectional and derivational morphology. The only real "difference" in syntax is literary Serbian preferring subjunctive da + present tense constructs instead of the infinitive, which is preferred by literary Bosnian and Serbian. All of those 3 (or 4) "languages" are 100% mutually intelligible, and share at least 95% of base lexis, the only differences being some trivial orthographical conventions comparable to British & American variant spellings -our/-or, -ise/-ize etc. The so called Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian languages were fabricted only in the 1990s by nationalist governments, and ATM 99% of all Western Slavist still treat them as one language, and are taught together in just about every single foreign uni course I bothered to check (since it's kind of impossible to learn e.g. "Croatian language" and not "Bosnian language"). Also, script means nothing - Croats used Cyrillic script too for centuries (in it's Western variety), and some extinct ones like Glagolitic, and Serbian can be written in both Cyrillic and Latin - moreover, today on the web overwhelmingly in Latin. Serbian Wikipedia primarily uses Cyrillic because it's easier to convert it to Latin (the affricated /dž/, /lj/ and /nj/ sequences are one letter in Cyrillic, and 2 in Latin - where they cannot be distinguished from non-affricated sequences), and they do have the latinica tab on Serbian Wikipedia that automagically converts the text to Latin ^_^ But essentially the script is irrelevant, it does not define the language - grammar does. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 04:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot. There is no linguistic criterion for being a language, it's a sociopolitical decision. If Croatian (for example) speakers start to call their idiom a separate language, then it means that it is a separate language, by definition. — Emil J. 10:28, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

There are enough Croats such as myself that still call their mother tongue Serbo-Croatian. Your definition of "language by self-identification of speakers" is absurd and not practiced anywhere. Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian "languages" were fabricated in the 1990s by nationalist governments, which is kind of ironic as for 150 years (starting formally with Vienna Literary Agreement, but in a broader context even earlier with Illyrian movement) their venerable codifiers sought to create one literary language for all of Yugoslavs, and when they finally succeeded nationalist bigots invented these "separate languges". I could rewrite this entire paragraph in SC and you wouldn't be able to tell whether it is "Croatian", "Bosnian" or "Ijekavian Serbian". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:30, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

(ec) A little investigation reveals that there is no active wikipedia in Moldovan. See http://mo.wikipedia.org. There is a banner on the top of the page that says "Dacă preferaţi să vizualizaţi Wikipedia în alfabetul latin, alfabetul oficial al Republicii Moldova, vizitaţi Wikipedia în Română." I don't speak Moldovan/Romanian, but will hazard a guess that this means something like "If you prefer to have Wikipedia displayed in the Latin alphabet, the official alphabet of the republic of Moldova, visit the Romanian wikipedia". Our article Moldovan language starts:

Moldovan (also Moldavian; Romanian: limba moldovenească), written in the Latin script, is one of the names of the official language of the Republic of Moldova. The language spoken in Moldova is identical to Romanian, sharing the same literary standard, but for political reasons both names Moldovan and Romanian are used inside the country.

The Moldovan wikipedia was written in the Cyrillic alphabet. The discussion in the proposal for closure, did not attract much interest from Moldovans wanting to contribute using the Cyrillic alphabet, and therefore the project was closed. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 23:02, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

We also have two Belarusian Wikipedias and the distinction, again, is largely political. Belarusian Wikipedia (be) is written in "Acedemic" Belarusian, which has been the official language of Belarus since the grammar reform of 1959. Belarusian (Tarashkevitsa) Wikipedia (be-x-old) is written in Tarashkevitsa Belarusian, used by some opposition groups and some of the Belarusian diaspora outside Belarus who do not recognize the (Soviet-era) 1959 reform. In terms of number of articles, the latter is slightly bigger. Both are written in Cyrillic alphabet and I'm actually surprised there is no Belarusian Wikipedia written in Łacinka. — Kpalion^(talk) 09:51, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Defensive Alliance, Offensive Alliance, Defensive and Offensive Alliance: What's the difference?

Could anybody here explain to me what is different between the following types of alliances, in terms of definitions:

• Defensive Alliance
• Offensive Alliance
• Defensive and Offensive Alliance

I'm just wondering what the actual definition of these things are in the English language.--$%MarshalN20%$ (talk) 16:13, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, a Defensive Alliance/Pact is a form of collective security, where one party will intervene to defend her allies when others attack them. For example, Britain guaranteed the independence of Poland, and declared war on Germany as a result of their defensive pact. An offensive pact would be an agreement to share offensive operations: if you declare war of them, so will I. One might assume that they would only be made between states that were close to union or with specific targets in mind (anti-Communist pacts?). That's my understanding, anyhow (alas based mostly on PC games!). - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 16:27, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I would guess offensive alliances are formed for a specific war. You wouldn't agree to declare war on any nation your ally declares war on - that would be surrendering your foreign policy (a key part of sovereignty) to another country. Only a puppet government would do that and they aren't usually formalised by treaties. You would agree to both declare war on a specific third country. --Tango (talk) 20:55, 1 August 2009 (UTC)