Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 March 9

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March 9

Irrepressible

Here's a question that's been going around my head for about a week, and the time has come to get it out.

Bubbly, happy, effervescent, exuberant, extroverted people are sometimes called "irrepressible". That always has a nuance, to me, of "We'd ideally like to repress this person but have learnt from experience we can't". Yet, repression is universally considered a bad thing to do to a person. When done in childhood, it's damaging to the psyche and it often leads to major problems in later life. So, why would we make any allusion at all to repression when describing such a person? Why would there be any desire to change the way they are?

I see this as a little different from "unstoppable" or "unsinkable", btw. That's referring to natural forces having no impact on a person's will or drive. "Irrepressible" can only be about other humans theoretically wanting to confine the person in a mental/psychic cage of their own devising. It's funny that quiet, retiring, timid types are never called "repressible". Oh no, that would be a shocking thing to do to a person. Why any less shocking to do it to an extrovert? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 02:59, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I've never associated "irrepressible" with repression (or any other dark undertones). Clarityfiend (talk) 03:30, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not uncommon for opposite words to drift in their meanings so that they are no longer opposites, at some point. I always thought it meant that they can't repress themselves, say by keeping quiet. In this way, the opposite might be "repressed", although that seems to bring up the psychological aspects. However, that sense is quite recent, linguistically, dating only to Freud. StuRat (talk) 05:10, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

As Dr. Nick from The Simpsons said after accidentally blowing something up: "Inflammable means flammable? What a country!" Kingsfold (Quack quack!) 15:55, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Also note that "bubbly, happy, effervescent, exuberant, extroverted" might have all been viewed as bad things, especially in children, due to the "children should be seen and not heard" attitude, and repressing these tendencies might have been seen as a proper upbringing. StuRat (talk) 05:13, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

To me it's never had the nuance that Jack suggests. To me it means 'always smiling, no matter what life throws at me'. Maid Marion (talk) 09:51, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

A one-word synonym for all those adjectives could be annoying. Like the babe in Little Fockers. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:02, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree, Maid Marion. I don't understand why the word "can only be about other humans theoretically wanting to confine the person". To me irrepressible has always meant "incapable of being repressed by bad times or adverse cirumstances". --Antiquary (talk) 19:42, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

That seems to be the consensus here, Antiquary. It can only be figurative, because I don't think I've ever heard of a person being "repressed by bad times or adverse cirumstances". If someone has been repressed, there's usually someone, or a group of people, we can point the finger at. Bad times and circumstances can have various effects, including depression, but not repression. But we seem to allow the theoretical possibility of this when we say that someone can't be repressed by whatever life has to throw at them. As I said, we never use it in the positive, to say that someone has been "repressed by life", or "is repressible". There you go, that's idiom for you. Thanks for the input, fellow fellows. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:01, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Language is not logical, it does not have to follow rigid absolute rules. To demand such is a sure road to madness! :) Roger (talk) 19:23, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, but I'm way past the point of no return now, so I may as well keep on to the end, tripping gaily down the Road to Madness. Then I'll be able at last to proclaim what I and many others have long suspected - I'm mad, MAD, MAD!!!. Surgeon of Crowthorne, prepare to be ousted from your rooms. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Neutral Target?

Translating Jeffery Deaver's Edge, I found the sentences as follows: "Keep the partner down. But visible hostiles or neutral targets only."

The speaker is engaged in a gunfight, and the 'partner' is a sniper hidden in a bush.

Does 'neutral targets' mean non-human targets or what? --Analphil (talk) 06:00, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's a bit more from the book:

I SLAMMED THE shifter into reverse; a three-point turn would have taken too much time. I shoved the pedal to the floor.

I heard a jarring bang from the side of our vehicle as the partner continued to fire on us from the bushes. But I’d moved just as he was pulling the trigger and the slug hit the sheetmetal, not tires. Which was good; run-flats are impressive but they’re not indestructible.

Another slam of a bullet on the body steel. The sound was very loud. Unlike in the movies, you never hear whining ricochets and you never see sparks. A bullet is a piece of lead that’s moving about three thousand feet a second. You hear a big, big bang when it hits your car and it usually stays where it’s sent and doesn’t bounce around the neighborhood.

“Covering fire,” I ordered. “Keep the partner down. But visible hostiles or neutral targets only. Do not shoot blind. Everybody else, stay down.”

So, in this context, I think yes, he means inanimate objects, perhaps things like bushes which may be hiding enemies. Also note that he uses "partner" to refer to the partner of his enemy. StuRat (talk) 06:22, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

We do not know which bush he is behind, but we can soon find out...yes. It was the middle one. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:39, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Why not just ask him to stand up, then shoot him ? :-) StuRat (talk) 10:55, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I can't imagine that "neutral targets" specifically means non-human targets. To me, it means people (and perhaps related infrastructure) who are on neither side of the conflict. Why they would be shooting at neutrals is another question... 86.181.205.21 (talk) 12:49, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Was the guy going forward when he put it into reverse? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:00, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Quetions from an English exam.

In England, six or eight wine glasses used to stand grouped by each person's plate 1. a dinner party, and they were used, not left useless and empty; today there are but three or four in the group, and the average guest sparingly uses about two of them. We have not adopted this fashion yet, but we shall do it presently. We shall not think it out; we shall merely conform, and let it go at that. We get our notions and habits and opinions from outside influences; we do not have to study them out.

1. A) after B)of C)at D)for

What does "We shall not think it out" mean? What does it mean to "let it go at that"? What does it mean to "study them out"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Freya3550 (talk • contribs) 09:51, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

"We shall not think it out" means we'll just do it and not think about it. "Let it go at that" means we shan't waste any more mental effort on it. "Study them out" means to research something. So what they're saying is that we shall just adopt this custom without questioning why it is. I don't understand the 1. bit though. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:33, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

The 1. is where the student is supposed to pick from the list of prepositions. The rest is just a distraction, I think; all you need to know to answer the question is what preposition comes before "a dinner party" (but even then I could see how two answers are possible). Adam Bishop (talk) 10:47, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

What a weird question. Why all that extra verbiage if the only task is to put the correct preposition at 1. ? 86.181.205.21 (talk) 12:39, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

The entire paragraph reads as if it were constructed by a non-English speaker. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:58, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

It's actually by Mark Twain...and thus there is also a specific answer! Adam Bishop (talk) 15:32, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Aha! Satire! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:34, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, this is a cloz test with many holes in it, and 1. is the only one I had a problem with.--Freya3550 (talk) 17:04, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a bad question because there's more than one possibility. Which answers were you choosing between, and why? Itsmejudith (talk) 14:12, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I was choosing between A and C, because at the beginning it says that the glasses were used, but then it says "today there are but three or four in the group", and I got confused.Freya3550 (talk) 02:55, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

C) is good and D) also possible. A) is just about possible but not ideal because the writer is talking about how many glasses get laid out in preparation for a dinner party. "Today" means "these days", "nowadays", in contrast with "used to". "We", later on means "Americans" in contrast to "In England". Twain is using the number of wine glasses in order to moan about Americans unthinkingly adopting fashions from England. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:24, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Pasty or pastry?

The article Finnish cuisine was recently edited to change "Karelian pasty" to "Karelian pastry". Is it a pasty or a pastry? What is the difference between the two? JIP | Talk 19:13, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Given that there is an entire article on Karelian pasties, I suspect the edit was mistaken. In my UK-based ideolect, a pasty (pl: pasties) is a particular kind of pastry item, usually a closed or semi-closed envelope of pastry containing a meat-based filling, as in the Cornish pasty. {The poster formerly known as 87.91.230.195} 90.201.110.135 (talk) 19:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I've reverted the edit. JIP | Talk 19:26, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

See here for a US journalist embarrassing himself because he didn't know the word "pasty" and thought it was an error. --ColinFine (talk) 23:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

There is also the "pastie" (sometimes spelt "pasty"), usually seen in the plural "pasties", which is the same spelling as the plural of the pastry "pasty", but not nearly so edible. Depending on one's tastes, of course. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 00:30, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

What is the average sentence length in English?

What is the average sentence length in the English language? And how is this sentence length distributed (i.e. how many 4-word, 5-word, ... sentences are there relatively speaking)? What's the (mathematical) variation?

How does the average sentence length compare to recommended sentence lengths? E.g. sentences with under 15 words are in some areas regarded as too short (prose). In others too long (children's books).

How does spoken sentence length compare to written sentence length?

What about other languages? How does English compare to French, Spanish, ...?

How is sentence length affected by sector (financial, literature, science, ...)?

How is the evolution of sentence length over time? (From Readability:) "In Elizabethan times, the average sentence was 50 words long. In his own time, it was 23 words long."

The only material I could find showed an average sentence length of 14,3 words per sentence, but no references there whatsoever. http://able2know.org/topic/114565-1

In wikipedia, the article about Readability shows some useful information, but it's very limited. Roelvermeulen (talk) 22:51, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I would be astonished if anybody can find an answer to this question as it stands, because I'm strongly of the opinion that it varies widely according to the type of writing (and probably other factors as well). --ColinFine (talk) 23:26, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you ColinFine, but that's exactly what I'm looking for. What is the distribution of sentence length, according to the type of writing, history, sector, language, written/spoken, ... I asked MARK DAVIES from the Corpus of American English (http://www.americancorpus.org/) and we quickly calculated an average sentence length of 17,77 words per sentence over a big corpus of 414,000,000 words. I'd think that this subject forms part of a linguistics course. Any idea where I could find this kind of information? Any linguistics professors here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roelvermeulen (talk • contribs) 10:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Research has been done on this type of question (for example: [[1]], [[2]], [[3]], [[4]], [[5]] -- but you've probably already found these and lots of other research). I haven't found any source that answers your exact questions, so we await an expert, or the results of your own investigations. Dbfirs 10:23, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

"Allahu Akbar" in Iraqi/Mesopotamian Arabic

How does one transcribe the version of "Allahu Akbar" said in Iraqi Arabic?

In several of the Iraq War hostage videos I hear the perpetrators yell "Allah laykwut" - which sounds different from the "Akbar" that I expected. Does the Iraqi dialect of Arabic have a different word used in place of "Akbar" WhisperToMe (talk) 23:11, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

'Allahu Akbar' would sound quite identical in the entire Arab world. Outside the Arab world perhaps there might be some regional variations, but I think this phrase is quite standardized. So the phrase you heard would be another one.

In Islam there are many, many different phrases to invoke God. Some are listed at List_of_Arabic_phrases. Not sure exactly which one you've heard, but perhaps it is made up of three words, the middle word being "la" (a negation)? --Soman (talk) 00:24, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It is definitely the takbir because when the men yell the phrase, sometimes you hear one yell "takbir!" to encourage the others WhisperToMe (talk) 01:36, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Is "Allah" the word for "God" in Persian, or do Iranians have a different word that's equivalent? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:27, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I think 'Allahu akbar' is a set phrase for Iranians; /xoda/ is the Farsi equivalent for 'God' while the Kurdish languages have something like /xʷa/. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{spik ʌp!} 04:55, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

All Moslems around the world, from Indonesia to Morroco, including Iran, use this same set phrase as an exclamation in many daily situations, and it is used many times in their daily prayers. And it doesn't mean that they don't have equivalents for it in their mother tongues.--Omidinist (talk) 05:20, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

That would make sense. And doesn't "Allah" actually mean not just "God" but "THE God", as in "the one and only God"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. The 'other gods' in Arabic are simply called 'ilah (اله). --Omidinist (talk) 06:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

So similar to (but more explicit than) "god" and "God"? Alansplodge (talk) 11:35, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Could you provide an example of one of the videos you are referring to? --Soman (talk) 12:17, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The Jack Hensley video. This link shows a very brutal beheading by evil people: http://www.4shared.com/video/HIYQFnpx/_2__Jack_Hensley_beheading.html - After the deed is done, the men yell the takbir WhisperToMe (talk) 03:21, 11 March 2011 (UTC)