Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 January 13

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January 13

Danish translation

I was reading a music review (in English) of the Genesis song Abacab. The writer described the guitar at the beginning as "røvballe guitar", and then said it was a Danish expression which he wouldn't translate. Anyone know what he meant? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 01:13, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a Danish article about it, if anyone can read that. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:19, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not Danish, but I tried Google Translate which suggests it's music as played by live bands in inns and hotels; also called "balle", "balmusik", or "røvballemusik". There seem to be quite a lot of videos in Google Video search and YouTube which may provide further insight; it seems to be quite general old-fashioned rock music. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:45, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

According to Wiktionary, røv means "ass/arse", but there's no Danish entry for balle. da:Balle just lists a bunch of place names. Pais (talk) 11:13, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

"Røvballe" (also sometimes spelled "røvbalde") means "arse cheek". And as the Danish article linked explains, it is a popular transliteration/pun on the words "halbal" ("dance hall ball") which is a rural phenomenon. I always thought it also had origins connected to "halmballe" ("bale of straw"), with the rustic connotations and all, but that is purely OR. The official Danish Dictionary gives this explanation about "røvballe musik": "let tilgængelig populærmusik, fx evergreens og dansktopmelodier, der fremføres som underholdning (og dansemusik) ved større private fester, offentlige arrangementer el.lign., nedsættende.", that is "accesible pop music, for example evergreens or dansktopmelodies [Danish ecquivalent to Schlagermusic], which are presented as entertainment (and dancemusic) at larger private parties, public arrangements etc., derogatory.". '

I think the schlager comparison is probably the most informative for someone not familiar with the expression. I am not entirely sure how a "røvballeguitar" would sound, but I imagine it to be something entirely inoffensive and with a slight Hawaiian twang. But again, that is OR. --Saddhiyama (talk) 11:29, 13 January 2011 (UTC)--Saddhiyama (talk) 11:29, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

[editconflict]"røvballeguitar" means the kind of guitar playing associated with "røvballemusik" which is a kind of music similar to German "schlager" music - a very popular kind of music in middle class Denmark. Among musicians "røvballe" (buttock) is a satirical way of referring to the kinds of gigs that are only played for money and which usually involve entertaining at parties and gatherings playing covers of popular 60'es songs and schlager type music. Røvballeguitar is characterised by mostly stumming chords - and usually playing the chords in their first positions i.e. without using barred chords. I have played quite a bit of røvballe myself over the years. ·Maunus·ƛ· 11:32, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks everyone, interesting stuff. I wouldn't describe the guitar at the start of Abacab as schlager-like in the least. Pub-band yes. DuncanHill (talk) 11:56, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

• I wouldn't call that røvballe either this sounds more like "puddelrock"·Maunus·ƛ· 12:07, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

SVO

Is there anything intrinsically more logical about ordering thoughts as subject-verb-object, or is it entirely subjective? 01:17, 13 January 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.159.77.192 (talk)

See Linguistic_typology#Typological_systems, which contains links to just about any system you can think of. You can read more there. --Jayron32 02:14, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

The only thing which really seems "illogical" is separating object from verb (OSV or VSO). Sometimes the subject can be considered the "topic" and the rest of the clause the "comment", so that having the subject go first can fit in with a tendency for topic to precede comment (see Topic-comment), but this is merely a general tendency... AnonMoos (talk)

P.S. Almost all Creole languages have SVO ordering, which Derek Bickerton etc. would claim shows that it's the least marked order (which is not necessarily the same thing as most "logical")... AnonMoos (talk) 03:06, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

One could argue that it's more "logical" (at least more consistent) to put the verb first or last. Verbs can have many different attached noun phrases, describing time of occurrence, origin and destination of motion, tool employed, etc., and in English most of them go after the noun, preceded by a preposition that identifies how the noun phrase relates to the noun. But two noun phrases, subject and direct object, are marked by position instead. It would be more consistent to introduce two new prepositions sub and ob and say "Eat with honey sub I ob my peas". This would also eliminate the embarrassment of sentences like "It rained". That's how Japanese works, but with the word order reversed (so they're "postpositions", and the verb is at the end).

Or one could attach the sub and ob to the substantives as suffixes, and call them case markers. How novel! But seriously, it is no surprise that core arguments (I've linked the phrase, but it's a pretty poor article) may be treated differently from peripheral ones in many languages. --ColinFine (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, far more languages put subject before object than vice versa, regardless of where they put the verb. I don't know if it's somehow more logical that way or if it's an evolutionary or historical accident. -- BenRG (talk) 03:20, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Tamil stuff

(I took the liberty of putting this in a new section, since I don't think it has anything to do with the above question 80.123.210.172 (talk) 10:15, 13 January 2011 (UTC))

உங்கள் மின்பதிப்பில் ஆங்கிலத்தில் THIRUVACAGAM என்பதை thiruvasagam என்று மாற்றவேண்டும் என்று தோன்றுகிறது. தயவு கூர்ந்து மாற்றிக்கொள்ளவும்.

ரா.கணேசன் —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.76.172 (talk) 07:10, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you're asking, but maybe Tiruvacakam or ta:திருவாசகம் will help. 80.123.210.172 (talk) 10:19, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

திரு கணேசன் அவர்களே, ஆங்கில ஆய்வுப் புத்தகங்களில் தமிழ் இலக்கியப் பெயர்களை எழுத IAST எழுத்துப்பெயர்ப்பு முறை பயன்படுத்தப்படுவதால ஆங்கில விக்கியிலும் அதனையே பயன்படுத்தி இங்கு எழுதியுள்ளோம். எனினும் thiruvasagam என்ற தலைப்பும் இக்கட்டுரையினையே சுட்டுகிறது.

(The OP is asking for ”Thiruvacagam” to be tranliterated as ”thiruvasagam” in the article title. But names of the tamil literary works in en wiki are written using IAST because a majority of the english scholarly works on Tamil lit, use this transcription. We do have thiruvasagam as a redirect though.) --Sodabottle (talk) 09:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Capitalization of typeface group names

Should I capitalize the names of classes of typefaces, or not? VOX-ATypI_classification (the article, not the system) is all over the place in this respect. (Not any more, I "fixed" it.) My guess (based on observation) is not. ...I'm thinking that "Aldine", "Carolingian", "Didone", and "Garalde" should be capitalized, because they derive from proper nouns (two proper nouns each, in the case of Didone and Garalde), and all the rest should be uncapitalized. I'm unsure, though, about "Gaelic" and "egyptian", particularly since a previous editor has gone to quite long lengths to prevent "egyptian" from being capitalized (using a hidden sic template and the comment "being used as a common noun here, so please don't capitalize").  Card Zero  (talk) 16:08, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

This page (cited in the article as a ref) spells "egyptian" with a lowercase e. It doesn't mention Gaelic, though. Normally I wouldn't put too much credence into some page on the Internet, but I hope at least typographers can get their use of uppercase and lowercase right. Pais (talk) 18:57, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Ugh, do I have to find out common usage for each word individually (in the context of typography)? This other page on the internet [1] says (at the bottom of the page) I shouldn't capitalize "roman". Should I obey? What about Venetian?  Card Zero  (talk) 19:12, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Because many of the terms are being used in a special sense (Modern, Mechanistic) or are derived from proper nouns (Venetian, Egyptiennes) I suggest capitalizing them all for clarity and consistency, at least in this context.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:36, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, sounds reasonable. Yet I'm fairly sure by now that "gothic", "roman" and "realist" don't usually take capitals in this context, in books about typography, for instance (and to capitalize them in this article might mislead some reader into following suit, and then that person will look like the odd typographer out, and be terribly embarrassed in front of his or her peers, and blame Wikipedia for ruining everything). That only leaves about another 30 terms to check. :/

Here on the Linotype site [2] I found the term modern being used (in the section "Iridium" on that page) three times, in the special sense of a synonym for "Didone", without capitalization. To clarify, do you think I should be looking at examples of usage like this, or do you think I should capitalize "modern", etc., in the article anyway?  Card Zero  (talk) 13:23, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I doubt whether you'll ever get complete consistency across all articles. I would focus on just keeping them consistent in the one article for now and continue the discussion on that talk page or, better, Wikipedia:WikiProject Typography where there will hopefully be input from people more familiar with the problem.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:43, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

How is "apartheid" pronounced?

--J4\/4 <talk> 16:35, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

/əˈpɑːɹt.(h)eɪt/ or /əˈpɑːɹt.(h)aɪt/ (uh-PAHRT-(h)ayt or uh-PAHRT-(h)eight) in American English. Lexicografía (talk) 16:38, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Apart-height [3]. Something to do with Dutch.  Card Zero  (talk) 16:41, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

The correct pronunciation in South African English, which is my native language, is quite simple to explain. It is an exact homophone of the phrase "a part hate". (Sorry I don't know IPA.)

BTW it beats me how people could miss the irony of the last syllable sounding like "hate". The propaganda value alone could have been priceless but practically everyone outside of SA missed it.

It's interesting that the American dictionaries split the syllable "a.par.theid" when the correct split is actually "a.part.heid". The word is formed from the Afrikaans "apart" which means the same as it does in English, "separate", and the suffix "heid" meaning "a state of being" similar to the English suffix "ness". In fact the word "separateness" was used in official communications the early days before "aparheid" became absorbed into SA English as a loanword. Roger (talk) 17:33, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, but you say that's in SA English, and it's an Afrikaans word. How is it pronounced in Afrikaans? The reason I'm curious is that our newsies (almost) uniformly pronounce it aPARtide, and I'm wondering if that's based on something, or if it's just a pure invention like their sha-ra-POH-va for the tennis star. --Trovatore (talk) 02:58, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Our article currently gives the Afrikaans pron as [ɐˈpɐrtɦɛit], which has undergone several changes since it was first added in January 2010. Lfh (talk) 11:43, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd guess -heid is a cognate of English -hood (such as in "brotherhood").—Emil J. 17:48, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

What American dictionaries split it that way? Merriam-Webster splits it apart·heid and American Heritage splits it a·part·heid. (Apparently no one's told AHD that you never strand a single letter at the end of a line when hyphenating a word.) Pais (talk) 17:51, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

If by American dictionaries you mean my off-the-cuff transcription, then yes.... But no, it is usually split apart.heid anywhere I've seen. Lexicografía (talk) 17:57, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that Lexicografía, I just assumed you were quoting a dictionary. I should have made it clear that that part of my post was a response to Lexicografía's initial post. Roger (talk) 18:25, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

But Lex also split it after the T, like the dictionaries.

Not initially, he/she changed it after I remarked on it in my post. Roger (talk) 09:54, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

On another point, I'm surprised at the unanimous agreement that the last sound is a T. It's spelled with a D and is presumably cognate to English -hood, so a D pronunciation is natural (if you don't know Afrikaans, obviously) and is what I use myself. Looking around dictionaries at www.onelook.com, I found the D pronunciation only in the Compact Oxford and in Wordsmyth, which I don't think is a real dictionary. --Anonymous, 04:52 UTC, January 14, 2011.

The boundary between "t" and "d" is very hard to pin down even in "native" English words. I find that variation among individual speakers is also very wide. Roger (talk) 09:54, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

See Final obstruent devoicing#Dutch.—Emil J. 12:55, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

The suffixes "-hood" in English, "-heid" in Dutch and "-heit" in German are indeed cognates.[4] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

www.forvo.com Kittybrewster ☎ 12:59, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Etymology of the French word "physicien"

Where does the French word "physicien" come from? (It means "physicist", not "physician".) --J4\/4 <talk> 20:59, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

The same place as physics, physical, physician, etc, from Greek physis, which roughly means "nature". (A more pertinent question may be, why does the English "physician" mean doctor, and not "physicist"?) Adam Bishop (talk) 21:44, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

(Or as far as that goes, how did doctor, an academic title, get to mean physician, a non-academic pursuit?) --Trovatore (talk) 22:01, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Because of the Old French fisicien which meant "physician" [5]. Now what? 213.122.7.154 (talk) 21:59, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

"Physic" is an obsolete word for "medicine" (certainly as a discipline, and I think also as a treatment). --ColinFine (talk) 22:32, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Yep, it's all over Shakespeare in that sense - "This physic but prolongs thy sickly days" (Hamlet), "Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it" (Macbeth), and in the stage directions there's "a Doctor of Physic", who says "This disease is beyond my practise" of Lady Macbeth's OCD. 213.122.7.154 (talk) 22:48, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Here's the word in the TLF: [6] ... there's an etymology and history section at the bottom. I can't read French, and have to rely on Babelfish, which tells me the word originates in 1532, by somebody called "HADDOCK". Since that's a translation of "ANON", I won't try to translate the rest. 81.131.29.120 (talk) 02:15, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

That says the first record of "fisicien" in French is in the 12th-century Roman de Rou by Wace. The 1532 citation for the spelling "phisicien" is anonymous (translated by someone named Flammette, I guess? I'm not sure what works the abbreviations are referring to). The 1680 citation is presumably from Cardinal Richelieu. That dictionary entry also says it is an "old" word for doctor. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:55, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Flamette is a title. Trad. could be a short for traduction (translation). Flammette seeems to be a translation from Fiammetta by Boccacio see for example [7]. Rich. is short for César-Pierre Richelet not Richelieu — AldoSyrt (talk) 21:52, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

is vs are

In the sentence 'It is you who ___ come', (and others with the phrase 'I/you who ___') I would instinctively put 'has' in the blank, but since who refers to you it seems more correct to put 'have'. Even more oddly, my instincts tell me to put 'have' in the sentence 'It is they who ___ come'. WHich is correct? Why am I confused? Thanks. 24.92.70.160 (talk) 22:31, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Remove the context and just say "you ___ come" and "they ___ come". Although I suppose I would instinctively put "has" in the first sentence too. I don't know grammatically why. Lexicografía (talk) 22:33, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not very good at describing grammar in technical terms but the way I see it, in the OP's initial sentence the verb agrees with (or refers to) "who" rather than "you", hence the confusion. But I don't think either is wrong per se. TomorrowTime (talk) 22:45, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

You is (absurdly) grammatically plural even when referring to one person, that's why. This is for historical reasons - it was originally the plural of thou. (It was also, for some reason, used when addressing somebody formally. I can only assume it's polite to pretend to be outnumbered.) Actually I think I'm barking up the wrong tree here because there's I have, so plurals might have nothing to do with anything. 213.122.7.154 (talk) 00:14, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

See T–V distinction. English used to use "thou" as the "T" (informal/singular) form and "You" as the V (formal/plural) form. French still does so to this day. --Jayron32 04:36, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

As does Russian. —Tamfang (talk) 05:11, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"I am the one who is talking" - NOT "I am the one who am talking".

But

"It is I who am talking" - NOT "It is I who is talking". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, as Shirley Bassey sings, "I, I who have nothing: I, I who am no-one, adore you ...". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:43, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

To put it in grammatical terms, who takes the person of its antecedent. Marco polo (talk) 23:57, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Without entering into the usage issue immediately, let me first remark that the OP has very good grammatical reasons to say "it is you who has come" and "it is they who have come." What he or she is doing is using the third-person singular for you, which is singular (as in "you are the one who has come"), and the third-person plural for they ("they are the ones who have come").

Thus the question is whether usage requires agreement in person and number or only in number, while using the third-person. This question is far from resolved in English. See the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage entries for "it is I who, it is they who" and "it's me."

It quotes commentators noting that "there is conflicting usage with the first-person pronoun: 'It is I who (is? am?).'" In particular, "Copperud opines that, strictly speaking, am should follow I, but says that there is a strong tendency to use is, since am sounds artificial." The dictionary notes however that am seems to predominate in print.

And all of this leaves open the question of what to do in a construction such as "it's me who." Of course, in "it's you who," we can't tell whether you is in the nominative or in the objective case.82.120.58.206 (talk) 04:05, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Is "guttiness" a word?

Is "guttiness" a word, and if it is what does it mean? Is is just a misss/alternate spelling of gutsiness? I ask because I find it in a number of online thesauruses. Ariel. (talk) 23:44, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

If you found it in thesauruses, then that should probably give you a hint at what it means. Although I just checked and many (but not quite all) of the results I found online are failed search results (e.g. "guttiness is not in this dictionary"). Wiktionary suggests that it is an alternate spelling of gutsiness; anyway it's not uncommon for people to drop an S like that, c.f. artsy/arty (Pennsylvania, U.S.). rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:00, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Wiktionary has gutty (meaning gutsy) and guttiest, although guttier is missing. I see no evidence for guttiness meaning anything other than the quality of being gutty. It makes sense to have both versions, since one has both guts and a gut; I wondered if gutty might mean fat, though, since having a gut doesn't mean being brave. 213.122.7.154 (talk) 00:02, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster says it is the nounified form of gutty, to which it gives its own range of definitions all under the broad "having guts"; gutsy and gutsiness are also defined similarly, but without any sort of link between the two (except of course that they both derive ultimately from 'gut'). Lexicografía (talk) 01:06, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure there's a different nuance between gutty and gutsy, though their meanings are certainly similar. To me gutsy means brave in the sense of "willing to take risks", whereas gutty means brave in the sense of "tenacious, willing to work hard (especially physically) through difficulties". --Trovatore (talk) 23:23, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

... as a UCLA alum, the main usage that sticks in my head is gutty little Bruins, which will no doubt generate lots of ghits. --Trovatore (talk) 00:08, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Thème vs. thême (Fr.)

Is it ever correct to write the French word thème as thême?

I ask because, in doing research for List of Variations on a Theme by another composer, I came across many works with French titles where "thème" was spelt "thême". Some of these works date back to the early-mid 19th century. Was it an acceptable variant then? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:56, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

It isn't in that handy dictionary of 19th c. French that Lesgles linked to the other day, and it does seem to be a common mistake (I found it as part of a long list of such mistakes on a forum where they were brewing up a Jeu Des Monstruosités D'écriture). I'd bet (but not much) that the old titles were just wrong. 213.122.7.154 (talk) 01:00, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

A quick rule of thumb is that a circumflex diacritic in French usually means that there was an "s" following the now-circumflexed vowel in an earlier stage of the language. However, there never was an etymological "s" in that word... AnonMoos (talk) 04:06, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

That's very handy knowledge. Thanks to both of you. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 04:31, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

It isn't just the circumflex. There are other accents which may have commonly replaced the "s", for example "état" for state. Of course, that may be because the é also modifies the sound of the vowel, so is used instead of the circumflex. But yes, you can read about it at Circumflex#Deletion. --Jayron32 04:34, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

The spelling "thême" was still in use in the 19th century (after "tesme" in the Middle Ages). Now, it is always "thème". --Keguligh (talk) 09:27, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Good. I've changed all the old spellings in the article. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:21, 14 January 2011 (UTC)