Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 November 9

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November 9

-er/-re

Is there any Commonwealth country (or other English-speaking country without a dominant US influence) in which one will typically read about centers, meters, etc.? Commons employs a variation of WP:ENGVAR for category names, and I'd like to recommend that "centers" subcats of Commons:Category:Convention centers by country be moved to "centres" where appropriate, but I don't want to cause confusion by recommending inappropriate changes. Nyttend (talk) 00:27, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't Engvar deprecate such changes when they serve no higher purpose? μηδείς (talk) 02:10, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

As I said, a variation; category names are routinely changed to reflect the national spelling. The same would happen here; write a bunch of articles on filling stations and recycling centers in Ohio and create Category:Petrol stations in Ohio and Category:Recycling centres in Ohio; they won't last long. Nyttend (talk) 07:03, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I am still confused, because you are talking about centers by country, not centres by Commonwealth country, nor centers in Wales, nor centres in Hawaii, where there would be a basis for the spelling. The distinction by spelling is entirely irrelevant to the thing itself, and having two categories, centres by country and centers by country would be pointless and inconvenient. μηδείς (talk) 15:31, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I think Nyttend is referring to subcategories like Convention centers (sic) in Australia [1]. More generally see [2] I think his point is that we could respell the names of them on a case by case basis while keeping them collected on one page as they are now (in my last link). Duoduoduo (talk) 18:57, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

He's talking about Wikimedia Commons links. His suggestion has already been implemented on Wikipedia [3]. Duoduoduo (talk) 19:02, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

There's a related issue with words like "governor-general", which are hyphenated in some countries but not in others. I'm still waiting for anyone to respond to my 2009 post here. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 09:42, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Languages bar

When searching any subject on Wikipedia, I observe that on the languages bar on left there is no mention of Hindi the national language of India and spoken or used mostly in India, while there indeed are the mentions of some India's regioal languages like Gujarati, Telugu etc. Any reason or comments about this non-inclusion in the Language Bar — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.197.127.64 (talk) 04:30, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Those links are added on each page individually to link to an equivalent page on another project, if such page exists. See Help:Interlanguage links. A random example of a page that does include a link to the Hindi Wikipedia is Marikana miners' strike (goes to hi:मारिकाना के खनिकों की हड़ताल). There's also the Main Page, of course. There isn't one on this page, but I don't know if the Hindi WP has an equivalent to this reference desk — Frankie (talk) 04:47, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

(ec)It is listed in some articles. For example go to Hindi and look for [[hi:हिन्दी]] which links to this. If the article you are looking at does not have a link to the Hindi Wiki then it is because either nobody has linked it yet or written the article. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 04:56, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

It is curious that the Hindi Wikipedia is not listed on the main page, either in the sidebar or in the list at the bottom, though it is larger than many of those listed. Anyone know why? Lesgles (talk) 21:42, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Gee, I could've sworn I saw it there when I made my comment above. See Template talk:Wikipedia languages#Hindi Wikipedia, it appears that it was evaluated as consisting mostly of stubs — Frankie (talk) 21:50, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah, right, thanks. I think I had seen that before and forgotten about it. Lesgles (talk) 22:04, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Fyi, for lists of wikipedias in all languages, see your choice of Special:SiteMatrix or meta:Complete_list_of_Wikimedia_projects or m:List_of_Wikipedias. (That's not counting the ones in incubation stage.) – b_jonas 20:59, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

language using

I wasn't sure if he was really interested or if he__ polite. A. was just being B. will just be C. has just been D. would just be The answer is "A". Why we use "was just being polite", can any reader explain it? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dqhxwd (talk • contribs) 06:44, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

The sentence is in past tense, while B and D are future, so they are right out. C doesn't work because it doesn't match the first verb. To use C you would need to say, "I wasn't sure if he has been really interested or if he has just been polite." The verb usage in A matches the rest of the sentence. Hence the answer is A. I'm sure there will be others along who can give you more technical info on the specific verb types. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:52, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

It's at least covered by Parallelism (grammar). -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 12:25, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Bugs' correct answer, A ("I wasn't sure if he was really interested or if he was just being polite") implies He seemed to be interested, but I didn't know whether or not he was pretending in order to be polite. However, D could also be acceptable if you were talking about the future in the past using would. "I wasn't sure if he was really interested or if he would just be polite" implies It was not yet clear whether he was interested or whether he was going to pretend to be interested in order to be polite. This is grammatically correct, but from a usage point of view the first will be far more common.

Just in this context is an adverb used to modify the phrase being polite. It is a synonym for "only", "merely" or "simply". - Karenjc 12:48, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. D sounds wrong to my native speaker ears because it violates the strong preference in English for parallel constructions. I think the right way to express the thought suggested by Karenjc's construction would be "I wasn't sure if he was really interested or if he was just going to be polite." Marco polo (talk) 20:17, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Karenjc went out of her way to contrive a sense or context in which D is valid, without suggesting that it's likely. —Tamfang (talk) 01:04, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

etc., usage of

1. Should we add a comma after "etc." when it comes in middle of a sentence?

   I searched on the web to find conflicting information

   • Supporting: [4], [5], [6]
   • Opposing:[7]

   Which is the correct usage (if there is any)?

2. What is the function of that comma?
   • etc. is paranthetical.[8]
   • etc. is an abbreviation.[9]

I would have also liked if you add the conclusion of the second question at [10] to our article on et cetera. I am wondering why WP nor Wikt do not mention any of the above in their respective articles. Thanks for your help.···Vanischenu (alt) 10:43, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, traditionally a comma is used, for the first reason you suggest (etc. is parenthetical—though parenthetical might not be the word I'd choose to use). In the same way, a comma is used after "2012" in "November 9, 2012, is today's date" and after "Illinois" in "Chicago, Illinois, is where I live". (I can't see your "opposing" example, as that Google Books page isn't visible to me.) Deor (talk) 11:30, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

There are two traditions, as the OP's links demonstrate: one tradition says use the comma, and the other says don't use it. One way to decide whether to use it is to provisionally replace it with "and so forth": if you would put a comma after "and so forth" in the same sentence, put one after "etc.", and if not then don't. Another way to decide it, which will probably give you the same answer, is to say the sentence out loud: if you pause after "etc.", then use a comma; if not, then don't. For example, compare "I did A, B, C, etc.[,] before I left" with "I did A, B, C, D[,] and E[,] before I left". Sometimes one might pause before "before I left", to emphasize both the clauses, and sometimes one might not pause if the clauses are not to be separately emphasized. I would use the comma or not depending on the presence or absence of the pause.

In particular I would disagree that "etc." is parenthetical. Compare "A, B, C, etc.[,] saw me" with "A, B, C, D[,] and E saw me." There's nothing parenthetical about "D[,] and E", so there's nothing parenthetical about "etc." Duoduoduo (talk) 15:14, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

(I don't see where any of the given links addresses the question.) The abbreviation etc. means and others. Iff the context is such that you'd use a comma after and others, then use it after etc.. —Tamfang (talk) 01:09, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

If you are mentioning the question I mentioned on if you add the conclusion of the second question at [11] to our article on et cetera., then I was requesting to include the question no 2 at [12] where it asked something like "should we add another punctuation after etc. when it comes at the end of a sentence" i.e., whether we should end the sentence as "etc..". (Now the page is not displayed to me since I am using a slow computer and I posted this question from high speed computer with Wi-Fi) The book has also given the answer (to that particular question) which was to use logic the same way as we do not add another fullstop at the end of a quotation. i.e., we write

He said: "asdahgfsa."

and not,

He said: "asdahgfsa.".

@ Deor, I can still see [13]. Thank you for the replies···Vanischenu^「m/_Talk」 13:28, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Ancient Greek Participles perfect table

I need table of Participles perfect neut . can someone help? πεπιδευκος, πεπιδευκοτος... --82.81.147.202 (talk) 11:06, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

The neuter is always the same as the masculine except in the nominative and accusative cases (and the neuter nominative and accusative are always the same as each other). AnonMoos (talk) 13:06, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Chinese name of novel

Hi! In this Amazon link, what are the Chinese characters? Can one deduce the hanzi of the publisher "RiDa Jiang Jian San Lang"? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 17:28, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

The title of the novel is 优美的安娜贝尔·李寒彻颤栗早逝去. "RiDa Jiang Jian San Lang" is not the publisher, but the author, 大江健三郎. Oda Mari (talk) 07:41, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! WhisperToMe (talk) 10:05, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Note: the "Ri" at the beginning is 日, meaning "Japanese", and not part of the author name. On the cover image, it's in square brackets 【日】 followed by the characters Oda Mari gave; the translator's name (许金龙) is given below. 59.108.42.46 (talk) 03:49, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Quick translation from French

A line in Basil Bunting's "On the Fly-Leaf of Pound's Cantos" reads: "et l’on entend, maybe, le refrain joyeux et leger." The Google translation would suggest "and we hear, maybe, the joyful chorus and slight", but my comprehension of French is even worse than my comprehension of Pound, so a human opinion would be appreciated. Thanks! – Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:36, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I would translate it as (taking a few poetic liberties) "And one hears, maybe, the joyful and light chorus". A few things Google seems to get wrong a bit is 'on', which in French is the "third person non-specific" pronoun. Depending on context, it can mean "we", "they", or "one". Léger means "light" in the "light and airy" or "lightweight" sense, but its clear that google screwed up and didn't include it as also being an adjective to modify chorus. I'm not a native French speaker, but I know enough to get by. --Jayron32 20:00, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

That's lovely, thanks! – Arms & Hearts (talk) 20:17, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

It's perhaps worth noting that "le refrain joyeux et leger" is probaby a quotation from the song Voici venir la nuit, which, in accord with the rest of Bunting's poem, has an Alpine theme. Deor (talk) 12:26, 11 November 2012 (UTC)