Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 May 19

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May 19

Japanese: Why they tell Cohii with H (coffee) when they got F?189.233.31.11 (talk) 00:26, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I've been wondering this for a while now. Japanese transliterated Coffee as Cohii, and not Cofii.

The Japanese probably got the word from Arabic, which pronounces the word with an 'h' sound. The English got the word through Turkish, which pronounces it with a 'v,' which became an 'f.' Wrad (talk) 00:30, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Because Japanese does not have [fi]. The [f] in Japanese is only the form /h/ takes before /u/. So it could be [kofui], but not *kofii. In fact, the only way to even write "kofii" as a foreign pronunciation would look a lot like "kofui".

[edit conflict] (I doubt they got it from Arabic. Probably from Dutch koffie.) — kwami (talk) 00:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Arabs were trading in the far east centuries before the Europeans. Why wouldn't the word come from Arabic? Coffee is an Arab drink. Arabs invented it. Wrad (talk) 00:51, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

They never had any direct contact. If anything, they could have gotten it from Chinese, who could have gotten it from Arabic, but even then Chinese is more likely to have borrowed something indirectly through Persian or a Turkic or Indian language. And as mentioned, words like that usually came to Japanese from Dutch (or Portuguese). Adam Bishop (talk) 02:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Well... most Japanese don't even really pronounce ふ /hu/ with an [f], but instead a [ɸ]. So you could say Japanese doesn't really have an F in the first place, so cohii is just as good (especially when /hi/ ひ is often pronounced [çi] with a fricative anyway). -Andrew c ^[talk] 01:23, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

In Japanese, there is a consonant that has several contextual variants. One is like English h and another is like English f. The former appears most of the time while the latter appears before the /u/ sound (close to the vowel English boot or cook). This loanword (which is most likely to come from English since many words pronounce the final vowel with an e like sound [as in pet] rather than an ee like sound [as in beet], which Japanese romanization transcribes as ii) implies that Japanese speakers hear an f before ee and, trying to fit it into their native phonology, classify it as this particular sound even though the nearest phonetic equivalent doesn't appear in that context. In other words. You say /ˈkɔfiː/ and Japanese speakers are likely to hear /kohii/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 04:19, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Just to add, a theoretical or original *fi or *fei would become 'hi' in Japanese. Note Chinese　非 'fei' - in Japanese this is 'hi'. I believe the Japanese word 'ko-hii' came from Dutch, but even if it had come from Chinese (as mentioned above), the 'f' in the Chinese word for 'coffee' - 咖啡 'kafei' - would still be pronounced 'h' (actually, Japanese uses these two kanji for 'coffee', but still pronounces it with the unrelated pronunciation 'ko-hii'). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:30, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The word was borrowed from Dutch koffie and is found quite frequently in Rangaku books. Usually Rangaku words were imported only from their spelling and not by pronunciation.

Historically, until the 18th century, は, ひ, ふ, へ, ほ was [ɸa, ɸi, ɸu, ɸe, ɸo]. That is why the Portuguese romanized this sound as f in Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam, Arte da Lingoa de Iapam and other texts of the time. Gradually this weakened to [h] and [ç]; [ɸ] only remains before -u. But now the phoneme is recognized as /h/ with [ɸu] merely being an allophone. Native speakers will often unconsciously write it as "hu".

It is only recently that Japanese has reintroduced [ɸ] in foreign loanwords. This may be written as ファ [ɸa], フィ [ɸi], フェ [ɸe], フォ [fɸ]. As such, it is still quite rare and has not been fully integrated into the language yet.

The kanji 珈琲 is ateji and did not become popular until the early 1900s.

By the way, early coffee shops began around 1886 (洗愁亭 in Nihombashi). Around the 1910, coffee shops were also called カフェー (kafee) for a time, but this is not very common anymore. 124.214.131.55 (talk) 15:50, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Estadio corazón (embriogénesis vegetal)

Do we have an article on this phenomenon? Although I can't understand Spanish, I just encountered it at es:wp (someone had also posted the article in Spanish here, so I encountered it because it was up for an A2 speedy deletion as a foreign-language-article-at-a-foreign-language-Wikipedia) and was made rather curious by the Google translation. Nyttend (talk) 02:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Could you link the Spanish article you found? There's no article in there under the name you provided. MBelgrano (talk) 02:54, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

w:es:Estadio corazón (embriogénesis vegetal). DuncanHill (talk) 02:58, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

A heart stage is mentioned in the penultimate paragraph of Plant embryogenesis#Seeds (and Heart stage is a redirect to that article). Deor (talk) 04:23, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

french

Hey guys (and girls)! I'm reading a Sherlock-Holmes style mystery novel, and there is a main detective guy who knows all this stuff. And there is a chapter where there is a woman who speaks with a heavy French accent, but the detective figures out she is not French from the start because she said "I do not speak well the English". Apparently the author thought this required no further explanation, but I am still confused. When I was in school I took latin adn spanish as my two required foreign languages, so no hablo frances! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.199.169.28 (talk) 03:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you reading one of the Maigret stories? (Just curious.) "I do not speak well the English" sounds like a direct translation from French (since in proper English it is "I do not speak English well"). So, it would probably make a difference if you reading it in translation or in French...maybe the author is using bad English to mirror the original bad French? Adam Bishop (talk) 03:37, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The detective heard "I do not speak well the English" and concluded that she is NOT French ? That definitely would require the author to have explained, because that would be typical of what a poor English speaker would say if he/she is from France. --Lgriot (talk) 05:28, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

But if you're reading a translation, and the book was originally written in French then we can surmise that the meaning is "she doesn't natively speak the language we are speaking right now." I had a similar confusion when I read Planet of the Apes until I figured out that it was a translation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 07:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't make sense, Aeusoes1 and Adam, the woman had a heavy French accent. She can't have had a heavy French accent when she was speaking French because you don't usually say that of a native speaker and if I am wrong here, why would the detective conclude that she was not French? .So the character was speaking English, and was either French or impersonating someone French. --Lgriot (talk) 10:49, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The translator could have been attempting to give the impression of non-native speech. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

It would help us to answer if you were to identify the book, so that we do not have to guess whether or not it is a translation, its original language, etc. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 12:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

IIRC, French is not one of the languages which uses the definite article for language names: "Je ne parle pas anglais", not "*je ne parle pas l'anglais". So "the" suggests that the woman's main language is something other than French. --ColinFine (talk) 18:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Vous avez raison, ColinFine ("you're right"). For example: Parlez-vous anglais? ("Do you speak English?") Typically, l'anglais would mean "the English (man)" in ordinary conversation. You can use the article, though that's often as we do in English: to indicate the language as a language (avec le français du Canada, with Canadian French; traduit de l'anglais, "translated from the English"). --- OtherDave (talk) 22:54, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I am French and I know a lot of people who say "Je ne parle pas l'anglais". That is not what I say myself most of the time, but it is definitely not wrong, and it is used. --Lgriot (talk) 03:39, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Arabic translation

I'm trying to figure out a word or phrase that apparently means "inseparable" in Arabic. It sounds sort of like "Joe's Villows" to me. (I need the transliteration. Arabic characters won't do me any good.) Thanks! Kirs10 (talk) 05:06, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure it's Arabic? Arabic doesn't have a V, and I can't imagine one word having that sequence of consonants. (For "inseparable" I would suggest "mulazim" or "multazim" but that doesn't sound anything like what you have.) Adam Bishop (talk) 05:15, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

They're saying it's definitely Arabic, but I may be hearing it wrong. It's the name of a restaurant in Tel Aviv, if anybody is familiar with it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirs10 (talk • contribs) 05:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Apparently there is a restaurant in Tel Aviv called "Shalvata", is that it? That's presumably Hebrew and Google Translate says it means "accompanied by", which is another translation for the Arabic words that mean "inseparable", so maybe that's it (hopefully someone who knows Hebrew will stop by and help). Adam Bishop (talk) 05:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Found it. It's Joz Ve Loz, apparently not a direct translation but a saying. Thanks for working on it, Adam! Kirs10 (talk) 06:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Aw man, I was looking at lists of restaurants in Tel Aviv and never saw that one. Oh well! Adam Bishop (talk) 06:12, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

By the way, according to this, "Literally Joz and Loz are the Arabic names of two different kinds of nuts, but they're used colloquially to mean something like "quite a pair."" ("Luz" is an almond in Arabic but I don't know what "juz" is off the top of my head.) Adam Bishop (talk) 06:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

What's "Ve"? The Yiddish equivalent of German "wie"? Rimush (talk) 10:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

More likely Hebrew ו / Arabic و "and". +Angr 11:39, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

And "juz" is a walnut, apparently. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:26, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

According to Wiktionary, "walnut" and "almond" in Arabic are جوز jauz and لوز lauz respectively. I'm pretty sure that /au/ becomes /o:/ in many spoken varieties of Arabic, so that would give us jōz and lōz. I don't know about juz and luz, though. +Angr 06:37, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I don't know, I was going by the Arabic spelling without diacritics, I didn't realize they were diphthongs. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:31, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Account with m-w.com

Resolved

Good day, I have a question, I hope it's allowed here: does anyone have an acccount with Merriam-Webster? I need to look up one word (journo) for my paper, I know there's a fourteen-day free trial but somehow my Visa wasn't accepted as appropriate. Thanks in advance! --Ouro (blah blah) 08:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Not Merriam Webster, but I have access to the OED, which is usually considered the ultimate English dictionary. For journo, it says that it is a colloquial term originally from Australia and is an abbreviation of journalist. It defines it as "A journalist, esp. a newspaper journalist." Early citations are from 1967. 124.214.131.55 (talk) 13:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

"[U]sually considered the ultimate English dictionary"? Looks like there'll be another "War of the Dictionaries" on the Language Reference Desk... ;) -- the Great Gavini 13:53, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, great, a dic-waving contest. I think it's safe to say that 124.214.131.55's is the biggest. -- Coneslayer (talk) 15:24, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! OED works great for me. Actually, as it turns out, in my paper (which, by the way, is in German about German press) I am already using two Oxford dictionaries (Concise and Advanced Learner's), and a German one by Langenscheidt. A third Oxford will not hurt. Thank you! --Ouro (blah blah) 17:38, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Minimal pairs distinguished by stress

In English, the two terms French téacher (teacher from France) and Frénch teacher (teacher of French) are distinguished only by stress. Likewise German teacher, Chinese teacher, and any other such formulation. I'm curious to find other examples of English minimal pairs distinguished only by stress. LANTZY^TALK 16:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

"Insult" (noun) and "insult" (verb) are distinguished by stress only. --Tango (talk) 16:48, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This is a standard pattern with certain pairs of verbs and nouns taken from Latin, such as 'project' (vb. and n.), both pronounced the same except for stress. I cannot possibly give you the full list of these, as there are probably hundreds of them. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:57, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I doubt there are hundreds - I think it's a quite small, unproductive group.

But it's a different case from the OP's, which I think is a general observation where an item could be attached to the phrase at two different points. In the "French teacher" case, "French" can be an adjunct or a complement (see X-bar theory) - in the latter case it is in the N', and takes the stress, whereas as an adjunct it is unstressed. Similar are the cases where a morpheme might be an adjunct or incorporated as part of a word: "black bird" vs "blackbird"; "green house" vs "greenhouse". --ColinFine (talk) 19:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Colin, that's more what I was interested in. I was curious about the role of stress at the phrasal level, not so much at the level of individual words. Your comment is very illuminating. LANTZY^TALK 19:14, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

See Initial-stress-derived noun. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:52, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

(But that's about the thing that Lantzy just said s/he was not so interested in.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:54, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I missed that comment by Lantzy, because I was so busy in looking for that article. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:31, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Interesting nevertheless, Wavelength. Thanks for drawing my attention to that article. LANTZY^TALK 00:59, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like something that depends partly on context and may be, in a sense, as limitless as the semantic field. Playing with it can get into some weird meanings, though. Try saying, "this is some good áss chocolate" (as opposed to "this is some góod-ass chocolate") and see if your friends notice. More acceptably, "that's a big-ass hole" differs from "that's a big asshole." — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 05:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Finnish has some cases where some, more or less complicatedly, inflected words end up having the exact same appearance of an unrelated compound word. One example which comes to mind is what I added to an article about the Finnish language earlier: puunaama means "wooden face" when it's a compound of puu "wood" and naama "face", but "which was cleaned [by such-and-such]" when it's an inflection of the word puunata "to clean (laboriously, like scrubbing)". In Finnish, the stress is always on the first syllable of the word, but in compound words, each of the original words gets this first-syllable stress. So the first meaning would be pronounced púunáama and the second púunaama. However, stress is not a factor in Finnish grammar, it's just the way of pronunciation people are used to. Misusing stress isn't strictly a grammatical error, it just sounds weird. This is particularly why Finns think Swedish-speakers from Sweden (rikssvenskor) sing when they talk, as opposed to Finnish-Swedish speakers, who speak Swedish normally. JIP | Talk 18:52, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Learn polish

I'm going to Wikimania in Poland in July and would like to learn a little Polish before I go. I don't require much ability, just basic pleasantries and enough to order food in restaurants, ask direction in the street, ask what something costs in a shop, that kind of stuff. I'm thinking that language teaching software is a good solution, but I have no idea which programs are any good. I found one program available for £5 that will teach you 35 languages and had some pretty good reviews - would I be right in guessing that that is too good to be true? Can anyone make any suggestions on how to learn a little bit of language quickly on a fairly low budget (I'm not going to spend £150 on Rosetta Stone, for example)? Is software the right way to go? Thanks. --Tango (talk) 16:23, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

If you are just planning to learn some basic stuff with no intention (yet) to take it further, why pay anything when you can get plenty of stuff for free? Try BYKI. I used this for learning basic Korean before I went to Korea, and it's pretty decent (it'll even get you up to a fully conversational level if you work at it). --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:53, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't aware there was good free stuff. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll take a look. --Tango (talk) 17:29, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

See (and hear) http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/quickfix/polish.shtml. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:42, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

That's interesting, I listened to every phrase I could at that site (the first eight) and found that very nearly all of them sound like they would do if I were to pronounce them in Finnish. I had expected them to sound very much different, as most Slavic languages are entirely foreign to native Finnish speakers, looking like they're almost all consonants, and what vowels they have have strange alien diacritics on them. But with only a few exceptions, I found that the correct pronunciation is close to what I would have attempted myself. I am going to Poland myself in the middle of July, but I don't intend on learning very much Polish just for that case. At least when I was in Prague, I found out that Czech people understand English very well. I only ever had to use one Czech word, dobrinem or something (I can't spell it properly), it's a basic greeting. JIP | Talk 20:09, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I prefer not to just assume that people in a non-English speaking country speak English and to make an attempt to speak their language. I'm perfectly happy for that attempt to fail very quickly and to have to resort to English, it's more a gesture than anything. --Tango (talk) 20:31, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Your impression is interesting. The first time I was exposed to Polish, I didn't recognize it as such and instead assumed it to be Russian spoken by a German with incredible fluency but putting no effort into losing his accent. 84.46.28.68 (talk) 21:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Damn it! I just realised that since I'm going to Poland in July anyway, I could visit Wikimania while I'm at it. But the schedule doesn't allow it, because the conference is held too early. I'm also going to visit the World Bodypainting Festival in Austria, and Wikimania and the festival are held too far apart, in terms of time. There is no way I could fit both into an InterRail pass with ten days' validity, and I don't want to spend extra money on a pass with longer validity. And furthermore, my sister (who is temporarily living in Denmark) has invited me to visit her just the previous week, and I would very much want to stay the full week while I'm there. Only the actual vacation (July 5 to July 25), visiting Kraków along the way, and attending the festival are set in stone yet, the trips between them haven't even been bought yet. But it's really the InterRail pass's validity that's the limiting factor here. JIP | Talk 19:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

La ciudad más bailadora

(1.) I came across this Spanish phrase: "la ciudad más bailadora del mundo." I'd be tempted to translate it as "the dancingest city in the world", but would that be accurate, both literally and in the tone it conveys? (2.) I have the impression that a lot of words ending in "-dor" can be used as an adjective, often a gerund-ish adjective, but just how universal is this process? I know that I can say "el tipo más luchador", or "el tiburón más comedor", or even "el toro más matador", but I don't think I can say "el político más senador". Can anyone enlighten me on this matter? What is the "-dor" rule of thumb, if any? LANTZY^TALK 19:36, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The obvious way in which senador is different from the other -dor forms you mention is that senador is not derived from a Spanish verb. (Senator may or may not have derived from a Latin verb, but if it did, the verb does not occur in Spanish.) Now, my Spanish isn't good enough to say whether all -dor forms derived from Spanish verbs can be used as verbal adjectives, but certainly forms unrelated to Spanish verbs cannot be used that way. Marco polo (talk) 20:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd be curious to know which city the OP is referring to. In any case, bailador/dora can be used to mean "dancer" (masc./fem.), although the proper term is bailarín/ina. Bailado is used metaphorically to indicate "good times", according to my Spanish dictionary. In English we use a similar metaphor from time to time. As for senador/dora, it does mean "senator", and Senado is used for "Senate", i.e. the U.S. Senate. The Latin is senatus and senator, so the Spanish comes from that usage. There is no verb, "to senate". According to my Webster's, the root is senex, which means "old", and is the source for terms such as "senior" and "senile". So the "dor" suffix derived from a noun instead of a verb is a bit unusual in Spanish, but it's them Romans' fault. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:25, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) The -dor suffix can build vebal adjectives (or nouns). In the present case, we use -ador to build from bailar bailador/bailadora. -edor and -idor appear when building verbal adjectives on verbs from the second (i.e. oler) or third (i.e. descubrir) conjugation scheme. As Marco Polo suggests, many words ending in -dor have of course another derivation. For instance, senador derives directly from the original latin senator, which in turn is an etymological derivation of senatus, word related with the latin word senex, i.e. old. [By the way, the -tor suffix has a connotation more or less similar to the Spanish counterpart. Pallida  Mors 20:42, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, for example the word for "spectator" is espectador, which not only has the dor suffix but also the bonus of the e prefix, as words that would start with an s followed by a consonant typically also have an e prefix in Spanish. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:49, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Yep, a prosthetic (or epenthetic) e. Pallida  Mors 21:26, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I put that expression into Google, and the first page that came up allowed for translation, resulting in "The dancer's world city", which in the writer's opinion refers to Havana, Cuba. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:28, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

"The dancer's world city" is perhaps loosely interchangeable with the original, but it's not really a translation. It doesn't even sound like idiomatic English. A much closer approximation seems possible. La ciudad más bailadora del mundo is clearly "the X-est city in the world", where X = whatever bailadora means. You could be boring and translate it as "the best city in the world for dancing." I intuitively went for the jocular "dancingest", but I'm not totally sure of the full connotation of bailadora, which may be used more loosely to refer to revelry and festive mirth in general. LANTZY^TALK 01:18, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The city that dances the most in the world.82.124.231.13 (talk) 10:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

As an idiomatic, nonliteral translation, how about "the dancing capital of the world"? +Angr 10:51, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

That's not bad at all. I might nitpick, though, and say that "capital" is more likely than the original to be understood as referring to the absolute amount of dancing going on, rather than a relative amount (in the sense that that city's residents have the greatest propensity to dance). 82.120.181.10 (talk) 01:08, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

What is the correct tense in this situation?

This situation came up again today. I was speaking to a friend about my father's parents. One of them is still alive, the other is dead. What tense am I supposed to use? Neither "my grandparents are" or "my grandparents were" felt right. Is there any logic, rule, or guideline about what tense should be used in this case? JIP | Talk 19:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Give us the whole sentence, please. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:10, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

"Unlike my father, who is a graduate from a technical university, neither of his parents (what?) even high school graduates." JIP | Talk 20:12, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

It is fine to use the past tense (were) in this case. You could have used the past tense for your father as well, even if he is alive. He is a graduate, but he also was a graduate right after he graduated. It would not be quite right to use the present tense in this case when referring to two people, one of whom is dead. Marco polo (talk) 20:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. My father is still very much alive, but only one of his own parents is. I just feel it's natural to use the present tense for living people and the past tense for dead people, but when speaking about a group including both, I felt using either tense was awkward. JIP | Talk 20:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that "were" is best in that sentence. You can get around the problem by saying "neither of his parents even graduated high school". That way you are talking about an action rather than a state of being, so it is unambiguously in the past. --Tango (talk) 20:28, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

"Were" works, and Tango's alternative phrasing takes away any ambiguity. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:31, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This is an interesting question, but in this particular case, you could get round the problem by rephrasing it to "Unlike my father, who is a graduate from a technical university, neither of his parents even graduated from high school." --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 20:48, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I already suggested exactly that. --Tango (talk) 00:50, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

were is not appropriate in this sentence. It should be neither of his parents was even a high school graduate. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 21:00, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

True, determiner phrases headed by "neither" should take the singular, but it is such a common mistake that we probably have to accept it as part of the language now. --Tango (talk) 21:25, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

"Now"? You mean, like when Dr Johnson wrote "Neither search nor labour are necessary" in 1759? Fowler (3rd edition) says "There are historical precedents for the use of a plural verb in such circumstances, but what was acceptable in the 18c. and 19c. may still become questionable in the 20c." - or as I would prefer to put it, some time in the 19th century somebody made up a rule requiring the singular so that they could browbeat people with it. --ColinFine (talk) 22:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok, so it was correct in the 18th and 19th centuries, incorrect in the early-mid 20th and then correct again from then on. It's ridiculous, but I don't see any reason why it can't be true. --Tango (talk) 00:50, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I was going to mention that 'was' should be used, but it didn't matter with my rephrasing of the sentence. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:03, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Seriously, do you want him to say "Neither of his parents was even high school graduates"? I think "Neither of them were graduates" is fine. It means "Both of them were not graduates". However, if you want to follow the (hypercorrect) rule (ignored by most native speakers) that neither requires a singular verb, then it has to be "Neither of his parents was even a high school graduate." Marco polo (talk) 00:00, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't seriously think that, if you'll look at my comment above, you'll see that that was what I said. And what makes it hypercorrect, vs. just correct? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 00:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't really matter except in very limited contexts (mainly high school English assignments). See prescriptive vs. descriptive linguistics. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It isn't hypercorrect. Hypercorrect means you've tried to correct it and gone too far and ended up with something wrong. In this case, you've just ended up with something equally correct. --Tango (talk) 00:50, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Marco Polo, be careful with "both ... not" constructions. In fact, don't use them, because they're inherently ambiguous. The negation of "Both of them were graduates" could be either "Only one of them was a graduate", or "Neither of them was a graduate" (or "Neither of them were graduates" is OK too). However, "Both of them were not graduates" doesn't tell you which meaning is intended, so it will be interpreted variously and not necessarily the way you meant it. (JackofOz =) 202.142.129.66 (talk) 01:09, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Same with "all ... not": Does "All of the people in the room were not Dutch" mean that there were no Dutch people in the room, or that there were some Dutch people there but also some who weren't Dutch? Impossible to tell. "Some ... not" is easier to navigate: "Some of the people in the room were not French" pretty much means what it says - some were not French; but by implication some others were French. No such implication is available for "both ... not" or "all ... not". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 09:22, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

'amigos llamantes'

I heard this in a song and can't understand what it's trying to say. Calling friends? The only other part of the lyrics I remember is 'diga lo que diga seguiremos adelante', but I can't find a song on google with that line. 70.162.12.102 (talk) 22:09, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if by chance you heard amigos y amantes instead? But I can't find anything hitting that target, either. Pallida  Mors 22:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

"amigos y amantes" = "friends and lovers". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:51, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

amigo is from the Latin amicus, and amante appears to connected with amator. It all comes from the root verb amare, "to love" (amar in Spanish). English cognates range from "amiable" to "amateur" to "amorous". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:58, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Amity, as you know, means friendship. LANTZY^TALK 05:05, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, hence the built-in irony of The Amityville Horror. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:18, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

"Llamantes" means callers,so it could be calling friends(in the sense of friends who are callers).The line works out as something like 'tell me what you have to tell me so we can move forward'. Lemon martini (talk) 11:15, 22 May 2010 (UTC)