Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 November 16

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November 16

Spanish "ir", "estar" and "ser"

Are the present participles (yendo, estando and siendo) of these verbs used, or is it just the present simple forms? Lexicografía (talk) 01:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean exactly? Used for what? ResMar 03:48, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Those three words mean "going", "being" (status) and "being" (essence). For example, if you want to say "I am going", you would normally say yo voy, which actually means "I go" but is usually translated as "I am going" because that sounds better in English. If you were to translate "I am going" literally back to Spanish, it could be yo estoy yendo. But I don't think that's how the present participle is used in Spanish. It's been a long time since Spanish class. I expect a Spanish expert will come along soon. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:07, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I've never seen them that I recall. It's redundant in Spanish and doesn't really work that way. Grsz¹¹ 04:13, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, I googled [spanish yendo] or something like that, and this lesson[1] came up. It's called the present progressive tense. It is used to describe something that is happening right now. The present progressive is the appropriate form of estar plus the present participle. To indicate you are in progress of going to the office, you could say yo estoy yendo a la oficina. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:17, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The present participles estando and siendo exist, according to google translate, but I'm not sure when they would be used. Estar and ser can be confusing. If I say yo estoy estando [-something] or yo estoy siendo [-something], the "somethings" would have to agree with the usage of estar and ser respectively. If you wanted to say, "I am being good", you might say yo estoy estando bueno. (I'm not totally sure that's a proper example, and it sounds kind of awkward.) But the present progressive is something inherently temporary, and I can't think of when yo estoy siendo would be used, because it would imply you are temporarily being something that is part of your essence, so it would seem to be self contradictory. Experts need here! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:25, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know Spanish very well, but Italian has very similar constructions, and has corresponding verbs stare and essere (more or less the equivalent of estar and ser, although the point of demarcation is maybe a little different). I can't imagine a situation in Italian where sto essendo (the equivalent of estoy siendo) would sound natural. Nor, really, sto stando (the equivalent of estoy estando) — actually, that sounds even more improbable.

But that doesn't mean the word essendo is never used! It just isn't used (with any significant frequency) as present progressive. It's used adverbially: Io, essendo chi sono, la vedo cosi' — "I, being who I am, see it like this". --Trovatore (talk) 04:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, by the way, these are not "present participles", as the original poster described them. They are gerunds. The present participle of essere in Italian would be essente, I think (it's not a common word); of stare, stante (that's a little less unfamiliar). Presumably Spanish has similar. --Trovatore (talk) 04:34, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Oy. The two citations contradict each other on that point. Let me ask you this: Consider the word "going". Is that a gerund or a participle? Or can it be either one, depending on usage? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:44, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The categories in English are a little different. In English, the "ing" forms are considered present participles when used in the present progressive, but in the Romance languages, they're gerunds.

The thing is that a participle is a way of making a verb into an adjective, whereas a gerund makes it into an adverb (in English, I think gerund is also used when it makes it into a noun, but not in the neo-Latin languages). Now, if the -ndo forms were adjectives, they would match the things they modify in number and gender, but they don't. So they're gerunds.

The -nte forms, on the other hand, do agree in number (they would agree in gender if they could, but they end in e so you really can't tell the difference). --Trovatore (talk) 04:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I had it backwards. Yo estoy siendo is the common construct for describing a characteristic, as per this discussion.[2] Yo estoy estando is a built-in redundancy, because yo estoy-whatever is sufficient. That discussion indicates yo estoy estando is used very rarely, maybe just in songs or poems sometimes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:38, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The three forms are frequently used in Spanish. As a gerund, they form adverbial clauses. For example: Yendo a lo del dentista, me encontré con un amigo. (On my way to the dentist's, I met a friend of mine.) Estando oficialmente desempleado, gané algunos ingresos en la economía sumergida. (While being unemployed, I made earnings in the informal sector), etc. These forms are also used to imply the continuous aspect in certain periphrases, as stated above (estoy siendo rudo contigo, I'm being rude to you, or future constructions, as stated also before. Note however, as Bugs previously implied, that estoy estando is mostly ungrammatical. Pallida  Mors 22:19, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Does Spanish have an equivalent of the Italian present participle ending in -nte? I would assume it does but I don't know Spanish well enough to be sure. In Italian they aren't used all that much, but the distinction from the gerundio (which I've translated "gerund" although that may not be quite precise) is pretty clear. For example una persona avente diritto al voto (present participle) refers to a person who has the right to vote (because not all persons do), whereas una persona, avendo diritto al voto, dovrebbe usufruirne ("a person, having the right to vote, ought to use it") means because a person has the right to vote, he or she should use it. --Trovatore (talk) 22:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

But are they used in constructions of which the English literal equivalent would be "I am being" or "I am going"? Lexicografía (talk) 23:23, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, just to be clear, by "they" you mean the -ndo forms, not the -nte ones, right? The -ndo forms are the ones used in sentences like "I am going". --Trovatore (talk) 23:45, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. But they are used with stare, not essere. Unlike in Spanish, in Italian it is somewhat unusual to use stare with an adjective complement ("I am sad" would ordinarily be sono triste, not sto triste). So it seems reasonable to hear the andando in sto andando as an adverb rather than an adjective. More evidence for that reading, as I mentioned above, is that a woman would still say sto andando and not *sto andanda. --Trovatore (talk) 23:28, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Spanish has the regular forms -ando, -iendo, yendo normally called gerunds (I mean, in every one of the usages illustrated above, while English uses the label gerund for some specific usage of this verbal impersonal form). Latin also has the gerund as an impersonal form: in fact, Spanish inherited it. Furthermore, Latin has a participle with personal form (i.e. with flections for gender and number) called present (active) participle, like amans, (one) that loves, which, though productive and regular in Latin, didn't turn into a regular, productive item in Spanish. However, Spanish retained many present participles as fixed forms. What I'm trying to say is that many present-participle-like forms like oyente, donante, pudiente, etc. derived from a Latin present participle, belong to the Spanish vocabulary, but there isn't a regular formation of present participles in our modern language. So, no one will understand something like pintante (cf. pintor). Pallida  Mors 09:18, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. I think the present participle is still productive in Italian, even if just barely. Not for nouns; no one would use dipingente to mean "one who paints" (that's pittore). But for adjectives, yes, though I do have trouble imagining just how you'd use dipingente (maybe for a brush, distinguishing it from some other sort of brush? seems a little forced, but not impossible).

I had my doubts, because I tried a number of them at garzantilinguistica.it, and most of them (except the ones I knew are used) came back with nessun risultato trovato. But then I remembered a photo in an Italian newsmagazine that I had seen when I first studied Italian in the States, and wanted someone to explain to me the word tracimante, which was applied to a bosomy young lady in a low-cut top. The word per se does not appear in the dictionary; it's the present participle of tracimare, which is a verb applied to a river that overflows its banks. So I think you'd have to say that's "productive". --Trovatore (talk) 10:41, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, the Italian Wikipedia apparently says it belongs to the conjugation, and hence it should be "regular". But knowing almost no Italian, I can't figure out how productive that should be. Being a regular verbal form, it is possible that a perfectly constructed and recognized form doesn't make it to the dictionary, since it is already there in the conjugation scheme. Just sharing a thought. Again, I'm not versed in Dante's tongue to support my claim. Pallida  Mors 18:45, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I knew that it was in the paradigm. What I was trying to distinguish from Spanish was whether this was a real linguistic difference, or a difference in the ideology of the linguists. Having thought about it, I'm fairly sure that it's a real linguistic difference. The it.wiki article talks a lot about how the usage is rare and largely confined to bureaucratic affectation, but the three examples they give at the top of the section all sound fairly natural. --Trovatore (talk) 22:22, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Rhetoric

Hi ho everyone. Driving me crazy because I used to know this and it has/had an article, but I can't find it anymore. This is a bit rhetoric, a bit language, so hope here's the right spot to ask. I'm looking for the term for addressing someone by specifically and intentionally not mentioning them.

Suppose at a party I make an allocution. I thank, by name, 9 out of 10 people on a committee for their help. I then specifically don't mention the 10th person, thus, I'm purposely saying something about the 10th (without saying it) by not extolling them. What's the term for this? Politicians do it all the time often in less subtle ways - 'some wack jobs out there don't think that additional funding to our city makes sense, I think they're wrong' (psst, the wack jobs are the competition).

The closest word that comes to mind is prolepsis, but that's not quite it. Thanks in advance for your help. JoeSmack ^Talk 01:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I really don't know. Could it be elision? Conspicuously absent? (Or conspicuous absence?) Bus stop (talk) 01:54, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Given your "closest word", you're probably thinking of paralipsis. I myself prefer the term occultatio for this (see lower down in the linked article, which seems to be a bit off target in some respects). Deor (talk) 01:59, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Yesssssss! That's it! I knew it was a 'p' word, but it doesn't have it's own article as 'paralipsis' (confounding my wikipedia category perusing skills). Much appreciated Deor! JoeSmack ^Talk 02:56, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

translation request

"I have two daughters, one a Ph.D. in math and the other an actress. The doctor is the pretty one!" Can someone translate this into French, please?—msh210℠ 06:06, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

"J'ai deux filles. Une fille a un "PhD" dans le maths, et l'autre fille est une actrice. La doctrice est la joli!" is my best guess. --Jayron32 06:11, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

A bit of tweaking to make it more idiomatic: "J'ai deux filles. L'une, elle a un 'PhD' dans les mathématiques, l'autre, c'est une actrice. La jolie, c'est la mathématicienne!" --Viennese Waltz 06:22, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Hm, thanks, both of you. Perhaps I asked the wrong question. Here's what I should have asked: Quine writes: "I was once bemused by a sentence in which a feminine pronoun elle referred back to the masculine subject le Docteur Françoise Lebrun. The writer is torn; docteur is masculine, but the doctor is female." So my question is whether such a sentence as Quine had read is really natural. Would a French speaker say elle, or would he use il? Or would he deal with such a situation by obviating the need to choose one of those? (Perhaps by substituting doctrice, as Jayron32 did, or doctoresse, or a completely other word, as Viennese Waltz did?)—msh210℠ 06:25, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Nearly all occupation words in French have masculine and feminine forms. Vendeur/vendeuse (salesclerk), boulanger/boulangeuse (baker), etc. I was making a bit of a guess at "doctrice", since "docteuse" didn't sound as good. I could be wrong about doctor specifically, but I think that female doctors would use the feminine form of the word doctor, whatever that would be. In french, these masculine/feminine forms are built into the language, so they don't carry the perjorative that occurs in English, where feminine forms (stewardess, actress) are perceived as diminutive and have been depricated. As far as I know, it is NOT common practice in French to make terms gender-neutral, since NO part of the French language is gender neutral. --Jayron32 06:40, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

For the record, boulangère is the feminine form of boulanger. — AldoSyrt (talk) 09:08, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

So you're saying that the issue (of whether to use elle or il, jolie or joli) would never arise, because no one would ever say le Docteur Françoise in the first place. Okay, thanks. Is what Quine read standard in older texts, then? Or dialectal? Or simply an error?—msh210℠ 06:44, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

No, I am saying that I thought it was. I am not a native speaker, we should wait for a native speaker to indicate how female physicians are referred to. My impression was that (theoretically) all occupation words had two different gender forms. However, this may be different in practice, though I had 8 years of French instruction in schools, its a bit rusty at this point, some 15 years later. --Jayron32 06:56, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes but we're not talking about a physician, we're talking about someone with a PhD in maths. This goes back to that old debate about how sensible it is to describe someone with a PhD as a doctor. IMO a PhD holder in a non-medical subject who insists on being called "Dr" is being pompous. It would be better to describe them as an expert in their field, hence my preference for mathématicienne in the above example. --Viennese Waltz 07:01, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Ordinarily a PhD holder is not described as a doctor, but may well be addressed as Dr. So-and-so, especially in an academic environment, or in the southern United States. I do not think this is more "pompous" than it is for physicians. Physicians sort of backed in to the "doctor" title anyway; the meaning was originally academic, and you don't have to do anything academically original to become a physician. --Trovatore (talk) 10:45, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Given that French is a far less mutable language than English (due largely to the work of the Académie française), I would say it was an error. --Viennese Waltz 06:50, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

As a French native speaker I would say: J'ai deux filles, l'une a un doctorat en mathématiques, l'autre est actrice. La mathématicienne est la plus jolie. Doctoresse was used to name the wife of a physician, nowadays it is no longer in use. And, yes, we say, in formal language, le docteur Françoise Lebrun because docteur is a title. Il or elle? elle for sure, because we refer to Françoise, not to her title; therefore we say le docteur Françoise Lebrun est compétente [féminine form of compétent]. If you want to avoid the gender problem say: Madame/mademoiselle le docteur Lebrun. However there is a circular of the French governement (11 March 1986) about the feminization of the names for occupations, functions, ranks, degrees and titles. According to this circular the feminine of docteur is docteure. This usage is slowly spreading in France (although the Académie française disagrees), it is not unusual to read or hear: la ministre, une auteure, une écrivaine — AldoSyrt (talk) 08:05, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

When the TV series Grey's Anatomy is shown in French, the title becomes D^re Grey, leçons d'anatomie, obviously using that form "docteure". --Anonymous, 14:16 UTC, November 16, 2010.

In France the title is not translated, it is not the case in Quebec. As usual our Canadians cousins are running ahead! For the feminization in French speaking countries, refer to fr:Féminisation des noms de métiers en français — AldoSyrt (talk) 17:34, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The general issue of grammatical gender and occupation terms is a recurring issue, not just in France but in other languages as well. It was discussed a lot during the presidential elections of 2007, when Ségolène Royal was one of the top candidates and people were asking if they were going to have to start saying "Madame le Président" or "Madame la Présidente". See, for example, [3]. rʨanaɢ (talk) 08:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem exists in German, too, and we do not even have to go to occupation terms. "Girl" is das Maedchen, which is grammatically neutre. So "The girl came out of the library where she had been reading about quantum electrodynamics" would translate to Das Maedchen kam aus der Bibliothek, wo sie/es ueber Quantenelektrodynamik gelesen hatte.. Personally, I would use natural gender sie, but I'm not actually sure what the majority of German speakers would do... --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

In modern usage, definitely "sie". Using "es" to refer to a girl would sound both quaint and condescending. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:20, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm... a girl old enough to be reading about quantum electronics is definitely a sie, but a little girl (prepubescent or especially preschool) might well be an es. And pronouns within the same sentence definitely have to be neuter, at least in edited writing: das Mädchen, das von seinem Vater abgeholt wurde ("the girl that_N. was picked up by its father"), never *das Mädchen, die von ihrem Vater abgeholt wurde ("the girl who_F. was picked up by her father). And to return to occupation terms, I remember when Angela Merkel first became chancellor, there was discussion about the use of the terms Bundeskanzler and Bundeskanzlerin, and one "language expert" proclaimed that while Merkel was indeed the first Bundeskanzlerin, she was also simultaneously the eighth Bundeskanzler, and if her successor is male he will be the ninth Bundeskanzler, not the eighth. There was also some discussion about why her official residence wasn't to be called the Bundeskanzlerinnenamt. (And even in English - Elizabeth II isn't the monarch of the United Queendom!) —Angr (talk) 21:37, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I thank you all for your informative replies.—msh210℠ 19:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

In my German grammar book - DUDEN, Die Grammatik, page 754 - I read that, when a noun like Mädchen is grammatically neuter but means a female person, then nowadays the referring pronoun usually is grammatically neuter too. Only when the pronoun is in the following sentence, or in the same sentence but quite far away from the noun, the pronoun is feminine. There are the following examples:

• "Das Mädchen, das mir vor einiger Zeit aufgefallen war, lief gerade über die Straße."
• "Ein … Mädchen … strich dicht an Hans Castorp vorbei, indem es ihn fast mit dem Arm berührte. Und dabei pfiff sie ... (Th. Mann)"
• "… stürzten sich auf das Mädchen, das in der Ecke stand, und drohten ihr mit Erschießen." -- Irene1949 (talk) 23:51, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Looking for a French news with French subtitles

Hi, I'm looking for a French news with French subtitles, that I can view online. None of the ones I've come across have subtitles for the web version of the news, even though I'm pretty sure they do for the televised one. Any help appreciated, and the same for Arabic, while I'm on the subject. Regards, and thanks in advance, It's been emotional (talk) 09:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

See Resources for Learning French, subheading "Sous-titres au Secours".

Wavelength (talk) 20:24, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The SCOLA cable TV channel used to air French TV news with subtitles. Don't know if they still do. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:45, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for those suggestions. I have already seen the link Wavelength offers, but there are no French subtitles on the internet version, at least not that I can find. I couldn't find much at all on the SCOLA site, and it made Explorer crash on my machine, so I wasn't able to pursue the link further. It doesn't seem to have the news with subtitles, from what I could tell. I have occasionally found Youtube videos in French with French subtitles, but not ones I would ordinarily want to watch. With the news I would be able to kill two birds with the one stone, catching up on a bit of current affairs, which I am normally too disinterested in to bother with, and brushing up on the French skills. Any further help appreciated. 202.89.166.179 (talk) 04:39, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The RFI Français Facile news podcast has a transcript, I guess that's roughly equivalent to subtitles. You can download it from rfi.fr 129.67.39.79 (talk) 13:10, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Merci beaucoup for that suggestion. I would say a transcript is exactly the same as subtitles, or better. I can at least go googling for other things like that (normal news-broadcast-French is simple enough for me, so I might get bored with Francais Facile). If anyone knows already which newses provide transcripts, I would be very happy to hear. I've come across one link (France24, see [4]) which I'm still trying to work my head around. Thanks to all, It's been emotional (talk) 01:57, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Heavily Germanized Latin challenge

Something which I've been curious about for five years, the coat of arms of God in the late 15th-century Wernigerode/Schaffhausen armorial, was uploaded to Commons as File:Wernigeroder Wappenbuch 010.jpg yesterday. The text in the image is in Latin, but written in 15th-century German script with apparent heavy use of German scribal conventions. If it were just ordinary Latin text, then I would have a fairly good chance of grabbing the basic meaning, but the additional problems make this very difficult for me. If any one is able to do anything with it, I would be grateful. The lettering on the shield is no problem, since it's the standard "Shield of the Trinity" diagram text... AnonMoos (talk) 11:27, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Huzzah, palaeography! The first column says "Domine omnipotens, in ditione tua cuncta sunt posita, et non est qui tue possit resistere voluntati. Tu enim fecisti celum et terram et universam que celi ambitu continentur. Dominus universorum tu es vestre." [Roughly from Esther 13:9-11] "Ne tradas domine sceptrum tuum hys qui non sunt, ne rideant adiutorium vestrum." [Roughly from Esther 14:11]

"Mater sancta Esthera, Ego mater pulchre dilectionis amoris et agnitionis et sancte spei." [Ecclesiasticus 24:24] (There is a stray word after that, transita?)

The next column begins "Deus iustus et saluans non est preter me." [Isaiah 45:21]

The rest of it, including the stuff at the bottom, is messier and will take some more effort, but I'll keep at it. I'm sure it's all Biblical, though. Actually I think it's from the liturgy, not directly from the Bible, which probably accounts for the differences. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:40, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well, if I squint, I can make out most of it. The text at the bottom (with my punctuation) is, I think: "Fides autem catholica hec est, ut unum deum in trinitate et trinitatem / in unitate veneremur, neque confundantes personas neque substantiam / separantes. Alia est enim persona patris, alia filii, alia spiritus sancti. / Sed patris et filii una est divinitas equalis [something] eterna maiestas. / Descriptam [?] [something] divinitate. Anastasius." I have to walk out the door at the moment, so I can't go on with this now. Deor (talk) 13:49, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and I think that what Adam read as "Esthera" is actually "ecclesia". Deor (talk) 13:52, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Ha, oops, yes of course that is ecclesia. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:08, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, the rest of the second column is from Isaiah 45:23-34, more or less; "curvabitur omne genu et iurabit omnis lingua propterea in domino dicunt mee sunt iustitie et imperium." (Then some more stray words, "vsaie et"?) Adam Bishop (talk) 14:41, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The first of the "stray words" is "ysaie" (i.e., "Isaiah"), identifying the source of the passage. Deor (talk) 01:08, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Deor's reading of the bottom text is correct; the only thing I would change is "confundantes" to "confundentes", and the first missing word is an abbreviation of "gloria". The second missing word looks like "armorum" but I don't know what that bit is supposed to say ("descripta armorum divinitate"? It looks more like "descripto" though). Adam Bishop (talk) 15:21, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, the backward flourish at the end (of the first word in the last line) seems to be the scribe's way of adding the "nasal macron" abbreviation, as in "deũ" and "trinitatẽ" in the first line of the bottom text and the word that may be "armorũ" immediately following. Thanks for your "confundentes" emendation; that was a typo on my part. Deor (talk) 16:30, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all; I'll be adding the text to the image description page once I've sorted out and organized it a little... AnonMoos (talk) 20:33, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Since when does God have (or need) a coat of arms? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:38, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

See articles Attributed arms and Shield of the Trinity. In this tradition, Satan also has a coat of arms, so God couldn't be left out, could he? However, the helm, mantling, crown, and crest with dove of the Holy Spirit are found in this manuscript only (as far as I'm aware). For the more standard version of the coat of arms of God (or of the Trinity) in 15th-century England and France, see image File:Shield-Trinity-medievalesque.svg ... -- AnonMoos (talk) 20:33, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I wonder how they developed Satan's coat of arms? Did they have a series of meetings with Old Red, or were all the details ironed out in a single conference call? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:04, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

As far as is known, it seems probable that a 13th-century illuminator or artist involved in the production of the Douce Apocalypse created it based on heraldic conventions and the Bible passage Revelation 16:13. (It's theoretically possible that it could have been invented for another now-lost manuscript slightly before the Douce Apocalypse, but if so, the manner and time of its real origin would still have been quite similar.) It never caught on in a big way, but a few people have been interested in such things down the centuries, and it's included in some Society for Creative Anachronism heraldry lists... AnonMoos (talk) 23:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I think we left one bit undeciphered: The text beginning with the second fancy capital at top right is "Ita deus et homo unus est Christus. Anastasius." Deor (talk) 01:08, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Just to note that the two parts followed by "Anastasius" are from the Athanasian Creed; see clauses 3–6 and 37 in the Latin version here. And the word between gloria and maiestas at the bottom should be coeterna. -- 11:29, 17 November 2010 Deor

I was wondering a little bit why it wasn't Athanasius... Thanks. AnonMoos (talk) 13:45, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

P.S. The PDF file is an excerpted version of http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/creeds2.iv.i.iv.html ... -- AnonMoos (talk) 15:56, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Stalin's name in Spanish

The Wikipedia article prefers "Iósif", but which is more common in everyday speech, "Iósif" or "José"? LANTZY^TALK 20:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I assume you mean the Spanish Wikipedia article.[5] In fact, there seems to have been some recent debate on the matter. Some weeks back it said Iosif or Jose, now it has Iosif as the primary and says "also known as Jose Stalin in Spanish". It's kind of odd, since his name presumably has the same etymology as Joseph and Jose. But if they've been calling him Iosif for a long time, perhaps the Spanish media many years ago gave his name as a letter-by-letter translation from the Russian, Иосиф. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:19, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

For those who can read Spanish better than I can, that article's talk page[6] has some muy caliente debate about the name. One of them indeed points out that the spelling Iosif Stalin is taken from Russian, and that to truly "Spanishize" it, it would need to be something like Jose Estalin or Histalin, because no proper Spanish word starts with S followed by a consonant such as T or P. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:28, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

So, now they have renamed Stalin. That project looses credibility each new day. MBelgrano (talk) 23:33, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

How is it losing credibility? WhisperToMe (talk) 17:32, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear: you're implying that most Hispanophones say "José Stalin" and that "Iósif" is highly anomalous? LANTZY^TALK 01:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

We used to call Mao Zedong by Mao Tse-Tung. Which version of Stalin's name do you consider to be correct in Spanish? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:10, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Domenico Scarlatti lived in Spain for many years, and was called Escarlatti there. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 01:24, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

According to google translate, "scarlatti" is Italian for "scarlet". The actual Spanish word for scarlet is "escarlata". So they didn't literally translate her name, they Spanishized it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:37, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The no-starting-S-before-consonant axiom is so strong in Spanish that a Spanish speaker talking in English will often add an E sound in front of a starting-S-before-consonant sound. The most obvious example I can think of is calling the USA "the United Estates". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:31, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

And "I am from Espain". That's also where we get "hispanic", "hispanicize" etc. Come to think of it, many European languages render the words Spain and Spanish as starting with Is or Es (eg. Italian, French, Greek and many of the Slavic languages). This is the theory I'm espousing, unless I'm subject to some kind of estoppal.  :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 01:54, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Not Italian. Spagna and spagnolo for the country and the language. --Trovatore (talk) 02:29, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

It's kind of the other way around, as the Romans called the region "Hispania", which had evolved to "España" by the time of Isabella and Ferdinand. The two words would be pronounced similarly. 1492 was a good year for the Spanish royal couple, as they drove out the Muslims (deciding that less is Moor) and sent Columbus on his way to "India". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for those corrections. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The E-before-S-before-consonant rule is fairly prevelant in French as well. It seems to be absent in Latin and English, so something must have happened with vulgate Latin when it made its way to the Iberian peninsula and farther north. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:41, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

It was a phonological rule of Vulgar Latin that a prothetic /ɪ/ was added at the beginning of words starting with s followed by a consonant, so scribere became *iscribere, stare became *istare, etc. This /ɪ/ then became /e/ in most Romance languages (at least the Western ones; I don't know what happened in Romanian). It even shows up in Welsh words borrowed from Latin, e.g. ysgrifennu < scribendum. In French, the s itself got dropped later, e.g. écrire < escrivre and école < escola. Meanwhile, in Italian and I guess Anglo-Norman French (since its effects are seen in English), this prothetic /ɪ/ or /e/ was dropped again, together with any original /ɪ/ that happened to be in the same position as the prothetic one, which is how we get English story and Italian storia from Latin historia, and English Spain and Italian Spagna from Latin Hispania. —Angr (talk) 06:43, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Bugs, I just had a chance to look at the Spanish article. The discussion is reasonably caliente, but mostly it's just a screed by a single highly opinionated user. He boasts on his talk page of waging a peevish vendetta against the translation of proper names, everyday usage be damned. I'm inching myself towards the suspicion that "José" is the overwhelmingly preferred form in everyday speech, and that "Iósif" is pedantic and unvernacular - kind of as if the English Wikipedia were to insist on "Lev Tolstoy" and "Nikita Khrushchyov". LANTZY^TALK 02:25, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Back to the original question, I checked Stalin's name in some other wikipedias... Latin "Iosephus", Italian "Iosif", French "Joseph (Iossif)", German "Josef", Portugese "Josef", Greek "Ιωσήφ", which of course is similar to the Russian. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:59, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Some translate and some don't. But I have grave doubts about whether any of the untranslated forms enjoy wide vernacular acceptance in any of these languages. LANTZY^TALK 02:35, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm still curious how they would handle the "Stalin" part, to truly hispanicize it. Or would they just leave it alone, it being a foreign word anyway? I noticed that the French spell the last name "Staline", presumably to force the "N" to be enunciated. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:36, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

And likewise, in Italian, shouldn't it be Giuseppi or some such? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:38, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

That's how the Italian Communist Party preferred it. LANTZY^TALK 03:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Very interesting document. Quite startling to see what the PCI once believed. By the time I lived in Italy, the "communists" had moderated their views so much that they would not have seemed radically out of place at a meeting of the US Democratic Party.

I like the introduction (not written by the PCI!), which I'll roughly translate for anyone interested:

Comrade Stalin, one of the greatest criminals in history (if not the greatest), murderer of millions of rural persons, workers, intellectuals, and even comrades in struggle, who ordered the murder of Trotsky, he who accused the Jews of the crime of cosmopolitanism, combated egalitarian forces calling them petty bourgeois, contracted with Hitler to divide Poland between them, the author of innumerable wicked acts in all fields (from politics to biology), is celebrated by the Italian Communist Party in the moment of his death as the greatest exponent of world socialism, lover of peace and liberty.

A blood-chilling document of the falsification of history.

Can't add too much to that. --Trovatore (talk) 04:02, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

(ec) The Italian article is simply at it:Stalin, which makes sense (I believe he adopted the name as more of a "single name", like Cher sorry, Cher, no offense intended, than as a surname per se. Not that this is relevant to the current discussion, but the lead of the Italian article is far too sympathetic. --Trovatore (talk) 03:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Spanish speakers normally use the form Stalin. In fact, my guess is that most speakers don't even know his first name. Pallida  Mors 09:29, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's surprising. Interesting. I guess that's sort of the case with Lenin, even in English. And certainly very few people bother with Trotsky's Christian name. But for some reason I think of Stalin as a surname rather than as a nom de guerre, which is truly what it is. Maybe it's because of all the "Kremlin Joe" jocular familiarity that English-speakers are familiar with Stalin's first name. LANTZY^TALK 09:30, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I haven´t answered Lantzy's question. I would say José Stalin is the more preferred/frequent form in Spanish, if we happen to know his first name. Pallida  Mors 09:31, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense. We tend to call him Joseph, but that wasn't his name either. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Or "Uncle Joe". I still wonder how the Spanish speakers pronounce his surname. Is it spoken like "Histalin" or "Estalin", even though it's not spelled that way? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:02, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Uh, that would be [es'talin], basically with an epenthetic e. However, you may also hear [s'talin]. Notice the words estalinista, estalinismo. Pallida  Mors 15:35, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Prosthesis (linguistics). Lexicografía (talk) 16:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Of course his first name was actually იოსებ, 'Ioseb'. --ColinFine (talk) 00:46, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I am a Spanish speaker and we have always called him "Stalin" (pronounced Estálin with a decreased amount of stress on the e) or El Stalin —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.60.7.74 (talk) 00:50, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Greetings, 99. I'm also a native Spanish speaker. To be honest, I haven't heard El Stalin before, though I understand it may be used in some places. As I have said previously, the dry Stalin form is pervasive. But it's frequent to find more complete forms of the name, as in here and there. Pallida  Mors 09:53, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The second link won't open for me, but the first is all in Spanish except it says "Joseph Stalin", the Americanized version of his name, thus muddying las aguas a bit more. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I know, I know. (The second link shows the name styled José Stalin.) Pallida  Mors 08:19, 19 November 2010 (UTC)