Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 August 10

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August 10

Polygons

I realize that this question may lead to a response of "it's just so" but here goes... Why is the term tetragon not in wider use? Why do we predominantly use "square" for a regular four sided figure? And then, I wonder the same thing with triangle/trigon. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 08:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Short answer: I don't know. Slightly longer answer: perhaps because triangles are more common in everyday life than pentagons, heptagons etc, so we prefer a Latin root over a Greek one. Nitpick: a tetragon/quadrilateral is any four-sided polygon, of which a square is a special case. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that "nitpick" is the nub of the issue, actually. There are zillions of possible tetragons, but only one square with a given side length. It makes we wonder why we don't have a special word for "equilateral triangle". -- JackofOz (talk) 08:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I understand your nitpick but if you were to ask people to draw a hexagon, for example, they would likely attempt to draw a regular hexagon. A regular tetragon is a square and isn't a special case from this example. Dismas|^(talk) 09:23, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Before following the link tetragon, I thought: "This has gotta be a redirect to quadrilateral", and sure enough... The term "quadrilateral" is reasonably widely used. Why "quadrilateral" is preferred above "tetragon", however.... well, maybe "it's just so"? See also the wiktionary entry. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There's the same issue with triangle - why isn't it "trigon"? I'd guess, with absolutely no evidence, that prior to standardization on ancient Greek derived names, the terms "triangle" and "quadrilateral" were more commonly used than the names for larger sided shapes and thus resisted regularization. -- 128.104.112.100 (talk) 15:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The simple answer may be the number of syllables in the two words, “square” and “tetragon.” DOR (HK) (talk) 07:33, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

A far better question is why (certainly in the UK) we use "quadrilateral" for a generic four-sided shapes, rather than tetragon. Using the syllables argument, it's a clear winner. As our language is latinate, it would make sense to prefer quadrilateral, but we're not keen on quinta or sextalaterals. It is an interesting inconsistency. --Dweller (talk) 10:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Our language isn't Latinate, though. Ici, en Angleterre, on ne parle pas souvent Français. Our language is a fudge of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, with a heavy layer of Greek and Latin vocabulary smushed on top of it. There's no reason to prefer Latin to Greek routes when coining words. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

There's an awful lot more latin-derived terms in English than ones that have Greek origins, as any trawl through the OED will quickly reveal. Nonetheless, my basic point, that the inconsistency is between the latinate quadrilateral and the greek-coined words for larger polygons, is unarguable. I wonder what its origins are. --Dweller (talk) 12:01, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. I daresay the word smush appears nowhere in the writings of Aristotle, nor of Julius Caesar. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Along similar lines, let's not forget the rhombus, which an old math teacher of mine defined as a "squashed square". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 06:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It should be remembered that polygony is considered a crime in most Western countries. As a result, we have developed the "love triangle" (which article also contains a paragraph on the "love rectangle") whilst we eschew trigons and tetragons. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Our language probably doesn't have a word for equilateral triangle because we encounter very few common circumstances where we need to distinguish between equilateral triangles and the other two -- scalene and isosceles. Squares more often need to be distinguished from rectangles that are not square, so we have a word for that special form of rectangle. Bus stop (talk) 20:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

A polygon is a dead parrot. Oh, wait, that's a different sketch... Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 06:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Almost all mathematical terms, and more generally, scientific terms, come, of course, from Greek. Romans did not care too much about maths, but a square is so a simple and everyday life object, that the Latin root prevailed on the Greek one, and was spread all around Europe. Note that quadratum is also a term in the military organization, like arma, castra, castellum, militia, vallum... &c, that all have derivations in English words. --pma (talk) 16:49, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Wishings

Are these wishes correct: "Nice vacations" (have fun on your vacations) "nice exam" (have luck on your exam) "nice weekend" ?--Quest09 (talk) 10:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

(have a) 'Nice weekend' is pretty normal as is (have a) 'nice vacation' (note not plural). You wouldn't say 'nice exam' - you'd likely say 'good luck in your exam' or 'have a good exam' (that sort of thing). 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It may be a regional thing but I wouldn't say "in your exam" and I have seldom heard it said that way. What I would say would be "good luck on your exam". Dismas|^(talk) 13:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it would be "good luck on your exam", vs. "good luck in taking your exam". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Must be regional. I would never say "good luck on your exam" always "in" or "with". Fribbler (talk) 13:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

UK usage is usually "in" your exam. But we'd also preceed "Nice weekend" with "Have a", unless it wasn't a wish, but a question ("Nice weekend?"). --Dweller (talk) 13:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Aha. A minor difference with the meaning clear either way. And "nice [anything]" would certainly sound odd, or like a question missing its question mark. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

"Nice weekend" isn't common in the US either. Instead of "nice..." we'll almost always say "have a nice...", e.g., "have a nice time!" The same is true for "good" (except in expressions like "good afternoon!" or "good luck!"). So, if your audience is American, I'd recommend "Have a nice vacation!", "Good luck on your exam.", and "Have a nice weekend." Or, if you're using them all in the same context, try to avoid over-using "nice"; "Have fun on your vacation!" works too, for example. -Silence (talk) 23:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

"Good --" only works with specific times of day ('morning', 'afternoon', 'evening', 'night'). Anything else would sound weird without a "Have a..." before it. —Akrabbim^talk 18:57, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Just be careful not to think that "Bad luck" is wishing someone bad luck. It's commiserating with them for having had bad luck, whereas "Good luck" is a wish for the future. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Willy nilly

Please see the disambig page and the associated Talk page.

A few questions.

1. Is nolens volens notable enough and subject to enough material to make it worth an article?
2. If so, should willy nilly redirect there? Or to the wiktionary page? Or somewhere else? Or is there enough we can write about the term to make an article of it?
3. Are the alternative meanings currently at the redirect page accurate?

Cheers --Dweller (talk) 12:03, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

1. Um, no, ok maybe - probably somewhere in a section around List of Latin phrases

2. No - different meaning. (ok I don't know latin - unless nolen volens means abitrary)

3. No. Only willy nilly(logic) is correct.

Willy Nilly means random/chaotic (also suggesting without care or consideration or planning to an act)- however if you use the online definitions it has two meanings. It's up to you.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The page was complete nonsense - dividing the term up into meanings for different fields (done willy nilly if you ask me) - I've corrected it. Please add the second definition if it is considered correct as well. The term " Arbitrariness" covers both definitions I think. 83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That was a bad idea. The whole point of posting here was to encourage discussion, not rushing in and making a unilateral change. I thoroughly disagree there's only one meaning - there are other meanings either idiomatically or formally recognised, see wiktionary. Can we please discuss at the Talk page. --Dweller (talk) 14:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about rushing in, the wiktionary definition seems perfectly good - the attempts at prescribing alternate meanings in different fields are (I assure you) WP:CB. or check it yourself. I think the word only requires a dictionary article.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

See Talk:Willy nilly --Dweller (talk) 14:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Nolens volens means "unwilling (or) willing; whether or not one wishes it; willy-nilly". The closest English synonym for willy-nilly is haphazardly or in some contexts indiscriminately, recklessly. I don't yet see any cause for a dab page, however, because only one article (arbitrariness) yet found seems directly relevant — ambivalence is not relevant because willy-nilly isn't "I can't decide between two options", but rather "I don't care, or am not taking proper precautions, about which option obtains". Likewise, "fatalism" is not directly relevant to willy-nilly, because being careless/willy-nilly in your behavior doesn't imply that you think you can't change the future; it merely suggests that one doesn't care enough about the future. So at this point, I recommend an in-encyclopedia redirect, with perhaps (referenced) qualifications in the article itself in a section on willy-nilly. The only thing that really distinguishes 'arbitrary' from 'willy-nilly' is that 'willy-nilly' is arbitrarily unrestricted behavior. -Silence (talk) 17:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest a redirect to Laissez-faire in lieu of Arbitrariness, but I fear that would probably cause some editorial angst. :) -Silence (talk) 21:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Nolens volens is exactly what I mean when I use the term. There is more than one meaning used in different places in the world, as wiktionary reflects. --Dweller (talk)

I hadn't realized that "willy nilly" comes from "will ye nill ye". I just assumed it was typically English wordplay. So that means that "higgledy piggledy" comes from "higgled ye piggled ye"??? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:15, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Possibly, because of course, shilly shally derives from 12 pence pieces found in water that's not deep, busy lizzies are named after the Queen's sense of enterprise and silly billy derives from invoices left on window ledges. Some redlinks there just waiting to turn blue--Dweller (talk) 14:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Think

Is Th considered being pronounced in American English as θ, the same way it is pronounced in British English? aghnon (talk) 22:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, except that it tends to be interdental in many or most forms of General American, while in RP and similar accents it's typically dental. The interdental version can be expressed with an additional diacritic in IPA: [θ̟]). --91.148.159.4 (talk) 22:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Dental fricative must be one of the most useless articles on this wikipedia as far as being unfathomable to non-experts is concerned. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The phonetics articles generally are borderline incomprehensible. Does anyone have the skills to make them accessible? AlexTiefling (talk) 10:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It's impossible to write about a science topic without using technical terms. Our phonetics articles are certainly no worse in general than our articles on topics in mathematics, physics, and computer programming. (Take for example, Introduction to quantum mechanics, which is "intended as an accessible, non-technical introduction to the subject", but which, despite its disclaimer is certainly not "accessible to those with a command of high school algebra".) Nevertheless, Dental fricative is just a badly written article; that has nothing to do with being "unfathomable to non-experts". +Angr 10:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. The difference is that most people are happy to accept they do not understand mathematics, physics, or computer programming, nevertheless they somehow think that the fact that they can speak their mother tongue entitles them to understand linguistics and related subjects. — Emil J. 12:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It's an encyclopaedia Emil. I feel entitled to understand, with only a modest number of clicks on wikilinks, any article on this site, whether that be about quantum mechanics or dental fricatives. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:45, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

That seems unreasonable. If quantum mechanics could be fully explained to someone with no background in 30 minutes, we wouldn't need physicists. Rckrone (talk) 05:41, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

An encyclopaedia article about quantum physics, not quantum physics? If it cannot be adequately explained to a reasonably educated and intelligent lay person, it shouldn't be in an encyclopaedia. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:24, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It's possible to give someone a cursory explanation of what quantum mechanics is sort of about without requiring any background. That's all well and good, but there are many more specific topics in quantum mechanics that would have almost no useful meaning to someone without a more thorough understanding of the QM basics. For example I wouldn't expect someone to be able to get much out of Dirac equation or quantum decoherence without some background. Does that mean those articles should be deleted? They're certainly notable enough topics, and to speak from experience they're useful to people who are interested in learning about the subject. Rckrone (talk) 03:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

In Britain, I've noticed it's increasingly being pronounced "fink", which is quite horrible. Not sure if this is an Estuary English issue or not. --Dweller (talk) 10:03, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It most certainly is Esturine. Standard pronunciation in London/South East; but it is irritating when people from elsewhere use it. Fribbler (talk) 12:19, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I find it irritating when Londoners do it. Not many do, but it's gaining momentum to speak like a three-year-old. --Dweller (talk) 12:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Or like Popeye. Another oddity among some dialects is to convert trailing L's into W's and sound like Elmer Fudd. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 13:13, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That;s not uncommon in parts of London, England. The fings wot yer car rans on are "wiws". Tonywalton ^Talk 13:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I fink yer rye mite. Fribbler (talk) 14:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Seems there's a name for it: L-vocalization. Tonywalton ^Talk 14:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The interesting part of that is that there parts of the American coastal south that do the same thing. Possibly a carryover from some British ancestors. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 18:11, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, reminiscent of Rhotacism. In Ireland only the town of Drogheda is non-rhotic, believed to a result of Oliver Cromwell's sacking of the town and it's subsequent re-population. And in The U.S. only New England (and a few other pockets) is non-rhotic. Fribbler (talk) 21:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Note that this is found in many languages. For example, it happened about a century ago in Standard Polish, and it's in the process of occurring in Bulgarian. Mo-Al (talk) 06:08, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Yep. And the change of /θ/ to /f/ (e.g. "fink" for "think"), much maligned in this thread, has parallels too: it happened in the prehistory of the Italic languages (thus Latin facio "I make, do" instead of *θacio), and it happened when Greek words were borrowed into Russian, e.g. Athanasios > Afanasy. I wonder whether people were accused of "speaking like a three-year-old" when those sound changes happened. +Angr 06:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

And Theodore > Feodor (or Fyodor), Martha > Marfa, etc. Interesting that Russian used to have the letter fita (Ѳ,ѳ), but it's been pronounced /f/ for centuries, so it became redundant since there was another letter Ф that served the same purpose. It was abolished in 1918. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:30, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the θacio to facio transition: I vaguely remember having heard or read that the transition from Latin facere to Spanish hacer (nowadays with a silent h) went from /f/ to /θ/ to /h/ to silent, i.e. in the opposite direction as θacio to facio. Can anyone shed some light on this? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I never heard it went through /θ/. As far as I know, it went straight from /f/ to /h/ (and thence to zero). +Angr 15:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

That's funny, we have the article th-debuccalization that describes θ > h. That makes four buccal fricatives I know of that have debuccalized historically in some language or other ([f θ s x]). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:39, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I found my source, Rebecca Posner, The Romance Languages, Cambridge Language Surveys, 1996 (2008 reprint), and I think I am mistaken in my previous post, by mixing up /θ/ with /ɸ/:

Chapter 3.4, p 139 (a) Spelling. "H alone could be used for the new Castillian sound that developed from latin F, (probably originally [ɸ], then [h] until it became silent in the sixteenth century)."

I am a bit confused about the exact pronunciation of the /ɸ/ sound. The only example in the article voiceless bilabial fricative that I have any idea of how to pronounce, is los viejos [lɔh ɸjɛhɔ], so I suppose that the [hɸ] in the example is the same sound that many speakers use for the the s of "mismo"? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:47, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

No, that's just the /h/ part. /ɸ/ is just like Spanish /β/ in "la vaca" or "mi burco", but voiceless. Looking at it another way, it's like /f/ except that the lower lip is almost touching the upper lip rather than pressing against the upper teeth. If you say [f] while looking in a mirror, you'll see that your lower lip touches your upper teeth. Now if you move your lower lip forward so it touches your upper lip, with just enough space between them that air can come out, you can make [ɸ]. +Angr 06:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that was helpful! Just to clarify my comment; to my ears, what I hear is neither "mismo" nor "mihmo", but something in-between. I was thinking that "mihɸmo" might be closer. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 06:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

In some regions, the S is pronounces like [x] or [h], after a syllable [1] [2]. I'm not sure mismo is one of these cases (too bad wiktionary doesn't provide many pronounciations in spanish). Still, ɸ exists in spanish. The reason I asked that question is that in hebrew ɸ doesn't exists and I don't know many people who can pronounce ɸ, maybe that's what made me think it is pronounced as f in some accents. aghnon (talk) 08:48, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

You linked to ceceo when you said ɸ exists in Spanish, which makes me think you've confused ɸ with θ. ɸ is made with the two lips, sort of like [p] but with the lips just loose enough that air can rush through. θ is the th-sound of "think" and the sound that occurs for c/s/z in ceceo Spanish. +Angr 13:59, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• Personally, I think someone with magical science hero internet superpowers should create a nifty gadget that makes our entire IPA system accessible and comprehensible to any old reader. Surely it wouldn't be as difficult as at least a couple of the remarkable accomplishments our wiki-technogicians have achieved. Here's what would solve everything: include a feature (disableable for any users who have already learned the IPA symbols, or who just don't care) that makes a scroll-over icon or other 'click here' effect accompany each instance of an IPA symbol, or at least each instance in use in our various 'pronounced as...' templates for the different languages. Clicking the symbol causes it to play a quick recording of the sound represented by that symbol (and/or textually demonstrate through a pop-up, in ordinary English-language phonetic characters, what the symbol 'sounds like', at least roughly). It should even be possible, through this method, to create an automated system that 'reads' the string of IPA characters for each article that has an IPA phoneticization, but does not have an actual recorded speaker who's demonstrated audibly what the word sounds like. In lieu of such a 'true' recording, an automatic recording is generated which simply pronounces each symbol, one after the other, with an audible 'gap' between each symbol so that none run together and they can be clearly distinguished — e.g., "guh .. lll .. eh ... nnn" for an automated IPA version of 'glen'). If we had such a system, I could even imagine us eventually creating a 'database' of IPA transcriptions for every article on Wikipedia, with a small button off to the side or in some corner (if not somewhere in the article itself) that can be pressed to generate the pronunciation of all the characters. .... Just an idea. :) Unfortunately, it's a dilemma between a whole lot of work for a very small number of people, or relatively little work for billions of people. ^_^;; -Silence (talk) 06:50, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Regarding the IPA stuff, I have one word to describe it: Gibberish. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 08:56, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Are you joking, Bugs? Although I'm anything but IPA-savvy, I clearly recognize the need for unambiguous terminology when referring to the sounds of spoken language. "Rhymes with" just doesn't cut it, it is imprecise and dialect-dependent. Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler - and the simplest way to communicate in writing about the sounds of speech that I can think of, is by using an International phonetic alphabet. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 12:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
      • • I find it incomprehensible. I shouldn't have to have a Ph.D. in linguistics to be able to understand how to pronounce a word in a mass-market site like wikipedia. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 14:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
          • Good thing you don't need a Ph.D. in linguistics to read the IPA then. Here in Germany, schoolchildren learn it when they start learning English -- at the age of about 11. It really isn't hard to learn. +Angr 14:39, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
      • Well exactly. The Latin alphabet used to write English is gibberish too, until you learn it, and for people who have learned it, learning the IPA – at least learning to passively recognize the symbols representing the sounds of their own native language – is actually very easy. Learning the symbols associated with sounds that are themselves unfamiliar, and learning to actively write in IPA rather than only read it, is of course harder. But a literate native English speaker can probably learn to read his own dialect of English in IPA in less than an hour. +Angr 13:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I won't comment on the rest of Silence's post (there are other serious problems with the suggestions), but I just point out that the idea of putting together recordings of individual sounds is inherently flawed. Many sounds simply do not have an "isolated form". This is most obvious for voiceless stops, which are pretty much silent by themselves; they are distinguished from each other by formant transitions induced in neighbouring vowels. At the very least, one would have to use prerecorded diphones. — Emil J. 12:30, 13 August 2009 (UTC)