Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 June 8

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June 8

Translation for "Sauglattismus"

I am looking for an equivalent in English. For those who read German, see de:Sauglattismus . For those who don't, I'm looking for an English word, possibly but not necessarily a neologism, used as an expression of cultural criticism. It targets the trend or need for everything to be funny just for the sake of funniness. (something like "for the lulz" in internet-speak). In my particular instance, a music critic is pointing out how a musical group manages to display a sense of humour on their new album without sinking to the level of "Sauglattismus". Any suggestions? ---Sluzzelin talk 12:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

There is no equivalent for this word in English. Probably the closest English word to sauglatt is hilarious. So, the approximate analogous form would be *hilaritism. This word does not exist in English. A similar kind of cultural critique does exist in the English-speaking world, though it doesn't seem to have gained the same degree of traction as in Switzerland, since it can't be summed up in a single, widely recognized word. An example of this kind of cultural critique in English is the book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Marco polo (talk) 12:49, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

This blog, in a post dated October 22, 2004, uses the neologism laugh-trackism referring to laugh tracks. This expression has a very similar meaning to Sauglattismus and makes sense in context, though I can't find any other examples of its use. Marco polo (talk) 12:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Marco polo! Hilaritism coincides with what I had mind. (And thanks for the Postman link too, I hadn't thought of that). Laugh-trackism even captures the tyrannical, LOUD, knee-slapping aspect of Sauglattismus. I was asked by one of the recording artists to translate the review where the underlying context is a (now possibly obsolete) trend in jazz to be silly, mimick circus music, parodize styles, quote all sorts of popular and other songs, just for the sake of quoting them, etc. Of course this can be done intelligently too - it boils down to a matter of taste, I suppose. And the reviewer seems to have had his share of listening to hilaritism and laugh-trackism in music. ---Sluzzelin talk 13:01, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

"Forced hilarity", maybe? Deor (talk) 13:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Infotainment-addiction, maybe? 195.35.160.133 (talk) 14:09, 8 June 2010 (UTC) Martin.

In spoken English, I often find 'wacky' and 'zany' are used in this sense. I think I've seen 'wacky' used this way in written English, but usually it needs additional context when written to clarify that the writer considers it a bad thing. While "How wacky of you" can be spoken in a way that clearly indicates a dim view of your taste, when written it might be mistaken for a sincere use of outdated language. 86.164.69.239 (talk) 14:23, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yep. I've read Douglas Adams (or was it Terry Pratchett, or both?) make bitter comments about the depressing feeling of hearing one's new novel described as "wacky". (Damn, that was a complicated sentence, good thing the OP's used to German.) I notice that Captain Wacky redirects to Australian ex-PM Paul Keating, which is surely perjorative. This link [1] says he was given the nickname by colleague Gary Gray, after "his relationship with Mr Keating broke down". So I think a reasonable translation of Sauglattismus, at least in the context mentioned above, is wackiness. 213.122.69.140 (talk) 04:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

That's not a redirect to Paul Keating in my Wikipedia. Which one are you using? It's a disambiguation page that mentions Keating, along with Homer Simpson. I must say I've never heard Keating referred to as this, and I can only assume that Gary Gray copied it from the Simpsons. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

213.122 must be a time traveler. Captain Wacky was a redirect to Paul Keating for about 4 months in 2006, but not since then. +Angr 20:16, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Is this the ‘contemptuous lol’; a form of ego defense that reduces existing dissonance in pop culture? -Mr.Bitpart (talk) 15:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone. I decided to use "forced hilarity", as suggested by Deor, because it conveys the meaning without distracting by being an unknown neologism. I added a footnote, however, including some of the other suggestions and explanations. ---Sluzzelin talk 06:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Cyrillic-alphabet text, which language?

On this monument "to the memory of the 29,000 martyrs of the ghetto in Grodno" (according to its Hebrew text):

• What's the language on the lower left?
• Does its text differ from the Hebrew?

Our photo archive records don't indicate where this monument stands; that and any related information would be appreciated. -- Deborahjay (talk) 13:31, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

тысяч is the genitive plural of тысяча, the Russian word for "thousand", so I'm going to go with Russian. Despite the location of Grodno, it's not Belarussian, as the inscription uses the letter и, which isn't used in Belarussian. I don't know Russian or Hebrew, so I can't tell you if they say different things, but maybe if you tell us what the Hebrew says, someone else (e.g. Jack of Oz, who knows Russian) will be able to tell us if the Russian says something different. +Angr 14:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

P.S. From wikt:thousand I see that the Belarussian word for thousand is also тысяча, so that one word isn't actually sufficient to distinguish the two languages. But I stand by the rest of what I said: it can't be Belarussian because it uses и. The letters for various "i"-like sounds are a good diagnostic for distinguishing Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian. Of the three letters и, і, and ы, Russian (since 1918) uses и and ы but not і; Ukrainian uses и and і but not ы; and Belarussian uses і and ы but not и. +Angr 15:06, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The Cyrillic text is in Russian. It reads:

ПАМЯТИ
29 ТЫСЯЧ
УЗНИКОВ ГЕТТО -
ЖЕРТВ ФАШИЗМА.
В ЭТОМ РАЙОНЕ В 1941 Г.-1943 Г.
НАХОДИЛОСЬ ГЕТТО.

An approximate translation would be the following:

IN MEMORY
OF 29 THOUSAND
GHETTO PRISONERS -
VICTIMS OF FASCISM.
IN THIS AREA IN 1941-1943
THERE WAS A GHETTO.

Is this much different from the Hebrew text? I don't understand it, but I notice that there aren't any dates mentioned, and the words that the Hebrew Wikipedia has as interwiki links of the articles on fascism and ghetto, פשיזם and גטו respectively, don't seem to be there. --Магьосник (talk) 16:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

According to one document I found, the memorial is located on Ulitsa Zamkovaya 7.[2] -Sluzzelin talk 16:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

No, the Russian is not a direct translation of the Hebrew. The Hebrew starts "To the memory of 29000 of the holy." I think it continues "from the Ghetto in Grodnah", but I'm unsure of a couple of letters - "me-" in "mehageto" seems odd, and I'm guessing the first letter on the last line must be "ב", though it looks like "כ" to me. The letters of "from the Ghetto" are spaced out, presumably for emphasis: I first thought they were an abbreviation. --ColinFine (talk) 19:08, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

OP adds: what's between the double-quotes in the first line, above, is my idiomatic Hebrew>English translation of the Hebrew-language inscription on the monument. (קדושים, literally "holy" [m.pl.] is "martyrs" in this context.) Soviet monuments to slaughtered Jews characteristically omit the ethnic identity which the cognoscenti would derive from the word "ghetto" while understanding that the perps called "fascists" (and sometimes "bourgeois") are actually Nazis and their henchmen. -- Deborahjay (talk) 19:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

So the fourth line reads מהגטו and does contain the word "ghetto". I misread it as מהכטו or מהבטו, and deduced incorrectly that there was no mention of ghetto in the Hebrew inscription. --Магьосник (talk) 19:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Just a small comment on the usage of fascism: It is true that, in English, a narrow definition of fascism refers to a political movement in Italy led by Mussolini, while a wider definition can include just about anything (for example, my American spouse often refers to the Swiss as fascists because they don't embrace libertarianism quite the way Americans do). Yet post-Soviet states traditionally refer to Nazis as Fascists. Quite recently, I witnessed several Victory Day events in a former Soviet Republic, and the Nazis were usually referred to as фашисты (fascists). ---Sluzzelin talk 10:37, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Just on this post: It is an inferential anacoluthon while identity politics or ideological politics have powerful ‘shotgun drive’ in concealing the question in context (or epistemic realm)? -Mr.Bitpart (talk) 15:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I can appreciate the mocking of my poor syntax, but fail to understand what your last twenty words mean. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:30, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, for the misunderstanding. No--I do make lot of mistakes, but your syntax is optimum and the contributions are very good qualities. -Mr.Bitpart (talk) 20:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

...and the OP adds: For the sake of enhanced understanding in our collaborative discourse here: I'm intermittently working on translating to English the texts that appear on memorial monuments (in Europe and elsewhere) to victims of the Holocaust. My aim is to render these faithful to the source, with whatever contextual details are available in our archives' registry and what our limited research resources can add at this time. Understanding does require relevant knowledge of the sociopolitical matrix of the time and place involved; this we must, for now, leave to the reader. Indepth queries are welcome on my talk page. -- Deborahjay (talk) 05:57, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

History of "the"

Our article on Middle English, while discussing the shift from Old English to Early Middle English, states that "But most ... case endings disappear in the Early ME period, including most of the dozens of forms of the word the." Were there really dozens of forms of the and what kind of function did they have? In context, it doesn't seem that the article is referring to different genders (as with modern German die, der, and das), which in any case would only account for a mere handful, not dozens. So what's the story? Matt Deres (talk) 16:48, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Here's over a dozen forms of the word "the" in Old English. I don't know if that's what you are looking for. I know you specifically linked to Middle English, but the only thing I can figure out (and I have not had a chance to study the older forms of English much) is that it is referring to the phasing out of the Old English case variations for the word "the." Falconus^{p t c} 17:18, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Hm, that's funny. There are roughly 20 demonstrative pronouns related to "the/that/those" listed in Introduction to Old English by Peter Baker. A lot of the forms overlap, so the actual forms are around 12. There are also roughly 20 demonstrative pronouns related to "this/these" listed in the same book. A lot of them overlap as well, so the actual forms are around 12 here as well. In any case, I wouldn't call 12 or 20 "dozens of forms, and I think it would be wrong to include "pronouns related to this/these" when counting "pronouns related to the/that/those". --Kjoonlee 17:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I changed the article to say "roughly one dozen forms of the word the" and linked it to the same place (Old English "the" forms) that I put in my previous post. If anybody comes along here and decides that I was wrong to do that, change it however you see fit. Falconus^{p t c} 17:31, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the linked article on Old English declension, I find a maximum of 11 forms of the word the in any single variety of Old English, e.g., 1) se; 2) Þæt; 3) sēo; 4) Þā; 5) Þone; 6) Þæs; 7) Þǣre; 8) Þāra; 9) Þǣm; 10) Þām; 11) Þȳ. Some of these forms have more than one grammatical function. For example, Þā is not only the plural nominative and accusative form (for all genders), but also the feminine singular accusative form. Some of these forms have other variants that would be in use in a different variant of Old English, but from this chart it seems that no variant had more than 11 discrete forms. So "roughly one dozen" sounds okay. Marco polo (talk) 17:33, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the info and the correction. I think it's awesome that there's someplace you can ask a question about Old English declensions and get multiple thoughtful and helpful answers in less than an hour. And just think of how many replies this would have gotten if they used Old English in Family Guy or hardcore porn! Matt Deres (talk) 17:51, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I call rule 34 on Old English. +Angr 18:48, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Does Flen flyys count as Old English porn? (Okay, Middle English...) Adam Bishop (talk) 20:48, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

So "ye" instead of "Þe" is just plain stupid and not some printing replacement, because there was no "Þe"? Rimush (talk) 20:34, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

See Ye_(pronoun). According to that page, "ye" was the Middle English word for "you (plural)", and "ye" was also used to replace "Þe" because they did not have "Þ" on the printing presses. The word "ye" never meant "Þe", it was just the approximation on the press. At least that's how I'm understanding it. Falconus^{p t c} 20:45, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but according to the list of Old English determiners above, there was no "Þe". Did the word "Þe" show up in Middle English? I always for some reason believed that Thorn wasn't used in ME anymore. Rimush (talk) 20:51, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

That depends on the printer/scribe and the dialect. Thorn lost most of its use in the Early Middle English period, but its use continued strongly in Northumbrian, for example, and a lot of scribal work, as did yogh and wynn. Steewi (talk) 01:09, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually, there was a "þe"; however, it was more of a complementizer (if I understand what a compartmentalizer is); it had the sense of "that" or "which". The account of Ohthere of Hålogaland has a comment about the funerary practices of the Lapps: "...ealle þá hwíle þe þæt lič biþ inne", which is basically equivalent to "...all the while that the body is inside". Nyttend (talk) 01:58, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thus my point - that's Old English. Thorn was only used in the Middle English period in Northumbrian, for the most part. Steewi (talk) 01:07, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

This is the opening of the article "Ye": "Ye (IPA: /jiː/) was the second-person, plural, personal pronoun (nominative) in Old English as "ge"." Is part of the sentence missing because I am not seeing how the phrase "in Old English as "ge"" fits in the sentence. Rmhermen (talk) 02:29, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd say that something is missing. In OE, the sound of "y" as "ye" was spelled with a "g" ("y" was exclusively a vowel), so the force of this part of the sentence is "spelled 'ge' in Old English". Nyttend (talk) 19:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The phrase entered the article on 13 May 2008 as part of a merger from another article. I can't find "ge" by itself in the May 2008 versions of that article, so this was apparently a typo on Sonarpulse's part. Nyttend (talk) 19:28, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

able to

Hi, I'm not a native speaker and I've got a question concerning the acceptability of the following constructions:

1. I was the last person able to do it.
2. I was the last person to be able to do it.
3. I was the last person being able to do it.

Are all of these correct, or is one/are some awkward/unacceptable/wrong? Thanks in advance -- 87.123.209.91 (talk) 18:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

1 and 2 are both correct (I tend to think 2 sounds a bit better, but it depends a bit on the context). 3 is not. rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:14, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! -- 87.123.209.91 (talk) 18:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't say 3 is wrong precisely, merely that it's awkward. Don't use it. (Compare "I was the last person walking", which is correct and not awkward.)—msh210℠ 19:22, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I would say that 3 is wrong. No native speaker of English would utter such a sentence, and I think that all would recognize it as a mistake. I don't know if it violates any formal grammatical rules, but it certainly violates standard English usage. Marco polo (talk) 19:45, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

My preference is #1 - it sounds the best to my central North Carolinian ear. #2 is by no means wrong, just a little wordier. #3 sounds pretty nonstandard; I agree that it should not be used. Falconus^{p t c} 20:00, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

"I was the last person who was able to do it" would also be acceptable usage. Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:45, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

1 and 2 are both correct (I prefer 1), but three is absolutely not correct and sounds like a foreigner. Evangeline (talk) 01:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Though you do sometimes hear "I being the last person able to do it," as the end of an explanation. "They all looked at me, I being the last person able to do it". So you might also get "They all looked at me, because I was the last person being able to do it," but it's tortuous. It might be an unusual tense, actually. 213.122.69.140 (talk) 05:21, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Not an unusual tense, it's an example of a participial verb. That kind of usage can't be a standalone sentence, though, it can only be a modifier attached to another sentence. (And technically, I think in that usage it's "supposed" to be me rather than I, although that may be changing.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I fixed your link, Rjanag. --Магьосник (talk) 05:58, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that you can have a clause "I being the last person able to do it" parenthetically within a sentence. However, it is not standard English usage (and I think not part of the repertoire of native speakers) to say or write "[because] I was the last person being able to do it." In the latter case, the correct options would be either 1) omit the verbal form altogether as in 1) above; or 2) use the form "to be" as in 2) above. Marco polo (talk) 12:24, 9 June 2010 (UTC)