Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 May 22

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May 22

Verse in Rudyard Kipling's poem If—

In If—, there is one verse whose true meaning I fail to understand:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

What is the situation to be imagined? That you deliver a speech in front of a lower class audience? And while it's certainly easy to lose the common touch when you're in favour with a king, I don't understand how you might be tempted to lose your virtue in contact with crowds? Does it mean that you might chat with common people and still maintain some class in your manner of speaking, without swear words and such? --KnightMove (talk) 03:51, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

To me, it brings to mind more the temptation of a politician to sink into demagoguery, or similar... AnonMoos (talk) 05:10, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I always thought it referred to herd behavior or not allowing yourself to be swayed by popular opinion, but to do the right thing, (see Stiff upper lip) something that would have been seen as important in the Victorian era. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 08:03, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

See A Dead Statesman for Kipling's contemptuous view of political orators (especially Liberal ones); "I could not dig; I dared not rob: / Therefore I lied to please the mob. / Now all my lies are proved untrue / And I must face the men I slew." So the line means (in my humble opinion): "If you can engage in politics without being corrupted". An essay about Kipling's rather odd political views is here. Alansplodge (talk) 18:12, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Russian letter in Hunt for Red October

Resolved

 – – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 08:04, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

In this screenshot, what is the second to last letter in the second word? It looks like a capital Greek Λ. The closest symbol I can find in the Russian alphabet is the obsolete ypsilon-like character. Thanks! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 07:30, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

КОМАНДИР КОРАБЛЯ ('commander of the ship'). By the way, is that Apple DVD Player? When I try to take a screenshot it's blank. —Tamfang (talk) 07:53, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Wow, I don't see the Л at all. Maybe it's a script thing. That's funny it says "of the ship" (I didn't know that). What other commander could it be? Yes, Apple DVD player, super annoying, but I use "DVD Capture" to go around any problems I may have otherwise with screen captures. (I reduced the image size during the Tinypic upload and didn't realize it would come out so tiny—DVD Capture does capture full screen.) Thanks so much! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 08:04, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

See El (Cyrillic)#Form, as well as the "Ship Commander" entry ("Names of key posts" column, seven down) in the first table under History of Russian military ranks#RSFSR and Soviet Union. Deor (talk) 08:11, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Wow, exactly what I was looking for, plus a bonus answer. Thanks so much!! – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 19:44, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

"Commander" is a naval rank as well as a job description. A person who is in command of a ship does not necessarily hold the rank of Commander and conversely people with the rank of Commander are not necessarily in command of a ship. Roger (talk) 08:11, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Not in the Russian Navy. There is only "kapitan" with three or four degrees: kapitan of the 1st rang (from German "Rang"), the 2nd and the 3rd, as well as kapitan-leytenant, the latter being the lowest. But colloquially a chief of a ship (komandir korablya) is also called "kapitan korablya", because komandirs have the rank of kapitan as a rule. Though to make more ambiguity in the Russian Merchant Fleet Code a chief of a ship is called "kapitan sudna" ("sudno" is a vessel). This position can hold a specialist with the ranks of "kapitan" or "shturman" (navigator). The ranks of the Russian Navy and the Russian Merchant Fleet are different. --Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 14:29, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I looked for DVD Capture and all I found was something for MacOS 10.3, in StuffIt format which my current system doesn't handle. Oh well. —Tamfang (talk) 08:04, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Standard "print-screen" typically doesn't work for videos. The player software often has its own screen capture. If you have Vista or Windows 7, there is the "Snipping Tool" accessory which can capture any visible part of the screen. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:53, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Punctuation for a list of questions.

If you are listing questions do you put question marks in the list. For example, is this correct:

He was bombarded with questions: what's your name?, what are you doing here?, who are you working for?.

or

He was bombarded with questions: what's your name, what are you doing here, who are you working for.

or do you have a single question mark on the end:

He was bombarded with questions: What's your name, what are you doing here, who are you working for?

None of these options looks right to me! -- Q Chris (talk) 09:50, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I would divide it into multiple sentences:

He was bombarded with questions: What's your name? What are you doing here? Who are you working for?

Here I followed the practice in American English of using a capital after a colon (see Colon (punctuation)#Use of capitals), which in my eyes makes it a total of four sentences. But I'm still not sure if this is generally the right way to sum up questions after a colon. Thayts (talk) 10:34, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I would punctuate it,

He was bombarded with questions: What's your name? what are you doing here? who are you working for?

or

He was bombarded with questions: what's your name? what are you doing here? who are you working for?

There's nothing wrong with having question marks inside a sentence like this, though it's not terribly common. You don't want to double up question marks with commas or periods, though: ⟨?,⟩, ⟨?.⟩. That looks bad. — kwami (talk) 10:47, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Thayts's usage looks right to me (BritEng speaker/writer), whereas Kwami's usage doesn't look at all right. Each question is a separate sentence in direct speech. If the sentence were to be put in reported speech, something like "He was bombarded with questions asking what his name was, what he was doing there, for whom was he working" then no extra capitals besides the initial capital would be required. --TammyMoet (talk) 11:31, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, my understanding has always been that a question mark (or exclamation mark, for that matter) replaces the period at the end of the sentence, always marking the end of the sentence and thus followed by a new sentence starting with a capital letter. From Question mark:

The question mark [...] is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop (period) at the end of an interrogative sentence in English and many other languages.

Thayts (talk) 16:11, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I would do it with a single question mark at the end. Using multiple sentences forces the reader to think about each individual question separately, which is probably not what you want -- the individual questions have no significance here. Looie496 (talk) 18:50, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree. I prefer Thayts' suggestion He was bombarded with questions: What's your name? What are you doing here? Who are you working for? For me, the short sentences and multiple question marks fit well with the idea of "bombarded". 86.148.154.226 (talk) 03:00, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Question marks and exclamation marks do not in general end sentences. The explanation from our question mark article is correct: you don't use a question mark together with a comma or period. But that doesn't mean it has to end a sentence.

I came across a style guide that gave this example of internal punctuation:

Is it good in form? style? meaning?

Whether you treat the line in question as one question or three is a matter of style, what sort of impression you were going for. — kwami (talk) 04:31, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I would've done it precisely as kwami's second example, without capitalizing the first word after the colon. I've never been a fan of that. – Kerαunoςcopia^◁_galaxies 12:20, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I find it very odd to have a question mark in the middle of a continuing sentence. I've also never seen it in practice. And if you read my quote correctly:

The question mark [...] is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop (period) at the end of an interrogative sentence in English and many other languages.

It says nothing about a combination of a question mark and period (which would indeed be very odd as well), it merely says that it comes in the place of a period (which marks the end of the sentence) if the sentence is interrogative. Thayts (talk) 17:50, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Reingequasselt? English translation?

I've come across the above word in a hotel review written in German. Google Translate can't deal with it and the few search hits I've found are, naturally enough, in German. Can anyone help me out? Thanks. Dalliance (talk) 11:48, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

It's a past participle of "reinquasseln" which is a synonym of "reinquatschen" or "reinreden" and can mean "to butt in", "to barge in", "to intervene/interfere (uninvitedly)" etc. The interference always takes the form of speaking though, which doesn't always apply to the translations I gave, I guess. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:14, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

On second thought, it could also take the meaning of "(verbally) interrupted" (as opposed to "butted in" etc). Perhaps some context or a link to the original text would be helpful. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:21, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I think "butt in" works well for this meaning, at least in American English, where "butt in" usually refers to a verbal intervention (whereas "barge in" usually has a physical meaning). Marco polo (talk) 13:34, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

"butt in" and "barge in" also work the same in BrE, should anyone want to know... 86.148.154.226 (talk) 01:48, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much everyone. It was in the context of an overbearing host at breakfast, so it makes perfect sense. Much appreciated. Dalliance (talk) 21:37, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I guess I'm a bit late to the party and answering after the question has essentially been resolved, but to add a bit to what Sluzzelin said above, all the German words Sluzzelin mentions have rather strong negative overtones and are not quite synonymous. "Reinreden" is the most neutral of the bunch - when someone is, err, reinreding, he might actually be saying something relevant and interesting, he's just being an annoying dick about how he's saying it. "Reinquasseln" and "reinquatschen" basically mean that whoever's interrupting is really talking gibberish (or at least saying stuff that is absolutely irrelevant). "Reinquasseln" would usually be said about a 5-year-old child interrupting his parents' conversation or something, but it can be a relatively strong insult because you're essentially equating the reinquassling guy with a 5-year-old child -- Ferkelparade π 23:22, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Good point. Interested readers might compare the meanings of the underlying basic verbs, for example at wiktionary: "quasseln" ("jabber, natter, palaver, yap, gab, jaw, twaddle, rattle on, rabbit on (to talk a lot or talk nonsense)"), "quatschen" ("to talk nonsense, to chatter, babble"), and "reden" ("to talk"). As described by Ferkelparade, the derived verbs with the prefix "rein-" keep the particular flavor of their own basic verb and are thus distinct from one another the same way "quasseln", "quatschen", and "reden" are. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:33, 25 May 2012 (UTC)