Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 May 11

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May 11

Ukraine / the Ukraine ?

I've seen the Ukraine as in the Netherlands. Lately I've also seen Ukraine without the article. What is the correct way? --AboutFace 22 (talk) 02:24, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Plain old "Ukraine" is correct. This is a good explanation [1] Calidum ^{Go Bruins!} 02:27, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Name of Ukraine --Viennese Waltz 02:27, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

• The above is a bunch of politically correct hogwash. Ukraine means "borderland", literally, at the edge. If calling the Ukraine the Ukraine is insulting, so is calling the Netherlands the Netherlands, and the Bronx the Bronx. як кажуть, чистий гній. μηδείς (talk) 04:32, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Ah, the etymological fallacy again. No, in English "Ukraine" means "Ukraine (name of a country)", and nothing else. Its etymology (incidentally in a language which doesn't have articles) is irrelevant. --ColinFine (talk) 11:12, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

• • This strange nation is very hard to understand. Seems they simply like to bother others with their inferiority complex. They often interfere a stranger's speech and try to "correct" it if he says "wrongly" in Russian na Ukraine or even make the "wrong" stress ukráinskiy instead of the "right" ukraínskiy. "v Ukraine vs na Ukraine" flamewars became a very significant and well-established discipline of the Russian Internet Olympics long time ago. So you got rid easily of them only with the dropped article. But you still "wrongly" retain Kiev in your language. But don't yield and stand strong! :) --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 07:04, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

For people who are, for some reason, unable to click through to the provided article which clearly explains why English-speakers used to say "The Ukraine", and now say "Ukraine", I will quote part of the relevant section:

"In English, the definite article is used with geographical identifiers primarily in one of four situations: 1. if the name is plural ("the Philippines", "the Netherlands"); 2. if a common noun is included ("the United States", "the Central African Republic"); 3. if the region in question is a sub-region of another ("the Sudetenland", "the Saar");[36] 4. if the country is essentially synonymous with a marked geographical feature ("the Republic of The Gambia [River]", "the Ivory Coast")."

Primarily in which one of the four? — Isn't the Saar a river? —Tamfang (talk) 20:02, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

So comparing it to the Netherlands is to suggest you do not understand when to use the definite article in English. Calling the region "the Ukraine" when it was merely a region in another state was perfectly correct: calling it "the Ukraine" now is to subtley suggest that it is still merely a region of Russia, rather than an independent country. I'm sure there are some editors who see no problem with this, and that is who you are positioning yourself with when you continue to add "the" at the beginning after being corrected. 86.146.28.229 (talk) 11:59, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Balderdash. According to your logic the Netherlands simply became Netherlands when it ceased to e part of the holy Roman Empire. μηδείς (talk) 18:02, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

But we were "supposed" to drop the definite article with Crimea at the same time we were supposed to drop it with Ukraine, so that "the Crimea" now sounds old-fashioned; yet Crimea has never been an independent country (though which country it's a subregion of is currently under dispute). (In German, the definite article has not been dropped with Ukraine, so Germans still say "the Ukraine", just as they say "the Turkey", "the Slovakia", "the Switzerland", "the Iran" and "the Iraq", though most other country names don't have the article.) Angr (talk) 14:29, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

There are plenty of counterexamples - to the point where I think our article is missing the point of the source.

We might well include an "the", traditionally, in names such as (the) Lebanon, (the) Sudan, (the) Congo and (the) Yemen. And we do not imply that the region is a sub-region of another by the "the". It's not that we're referring to geographical features - there are plenty of countries named after geographical features that have never had "the" in English (e.g. Paraguay, Niger, Panama). Moreover, the vast majority of sub-regions do not get a "the". We do not say "the" Appalachia or "the" Sussex or "the" Schleswig-Holstein or "the" Siberia.

The point the source is making is not that the "the" implies a subregion, but that calling it the borderland implies a subregion. The Ukrainians presumably felt that adding "the" treated "Ukraine" as more of a common noun (borderland) whereas without a "the" it became clearly a proper noun (Ukraine). Never mind that not one English-speaker in a hundred is likely to know that "Ukraine" might possibly mean anything other than "Ukraine", with or without the "the". Kahastok talk 14:59, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it a little funny that Ukraine has continued to use a name with that etymology rather than adopt a new one (Dnepria?) or an ancient one (Sarmatia, Iazygia, Cimmeria?). But I remind myself that, after a phrase becomes a lexeme, most people don't analyze it. —Tamfang (talk) 20:02, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Wow, I did not expect the issue was so complicated. Now I understand why I mostly saw the Ukraine in the past years and the definite article sort of disappeared later. Honestly, my position is different. I believe the language is idiomatic and this is why I am not surprised by anything. I want to follow the usage, period. So, it seems to be Ukraine, correct? Well, I will change. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 15:48, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

The issue is not at all complicated, it's simply political correctness run amok. μηδείς (talk) 18:02, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

What nonsense you do speak at times. --Viennese Waltz 18:08, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I await VW's thread on this at the talk page, or perhaps ANI. Until then, being in some sense Ukrainian, and remembering when, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was explicitly clarified on the News that we were now to refer to the country as Ukraine, and not The Ukraine, I can assure anyone under 33 or so that this is utter bullshit. In fact, my grandomther had a rather naughty rhyme she made about this, where the only possible English translation required a "the" before kraju. μηδείς (talk) 01:05, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

By 'political correctness', do you mean 'correct reference to political entities'? Because that's what this is. 'Political correctness gone mad/run amok' is otherwise an anti-liberal dog-whistle which amounts to WP:IDONTLIKEIT. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:36, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

So, you mean I am a Nazi, Alex? I don't mind if you want to call the country Ukraine, I do so myself. But the hysterical prescriptive insistence that the country not be called The Ukraine is anti-scientific pantywaistry. μηδείς (talk) 01:05, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I mean, and say, nothing of the sort. However, you're right that it's hypocritical of me to be a prescriptivist here when I'm not elsewhere. I think what I'm trying to argue is that official guidance carries some weight - not that we all ought to change how we speak at the drop of a hat. I certainly say 'the Ukraine' sometimes, especially in historical contexts. Apologies. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I think we may basically agree, Alex. μηδείς (talk) 04:43, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Let's say I meet a man. He introduces himself to me as "Robert". We're chatting a while, and I see an old friend of mine. I invite my friend over, and I introduce my new acquaintance by saying "Hey, meet Bob!" He shakes my friend's hand, and says, quite politely, "Actually, I prefer to be called "Robert" if you don't mind" and is very cordial and nice about it. If I keep calling him Bob, I'm an asshole. Who am I to decide what he should or should not like to be called. It's his name, he gets to decide what he wants to be called, and he owes me nor anyone else any explanation. As a decent human, I should call him what he wants to be called, and that's it. --Jayron32 21:45, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations, you've just persuaded me that the capital of Ukraine should be spelt "Kyiv" in English. RomanSpa (talk) 09:51, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations again, you've made a perfect fake analogy. Toponyms are not personal names of ordinary people. They live totally different lives. But if you don't mind I'll continue. Many English kings like Williams, James, Johns become Wilhelm, Jacob/Iakov, Jean/Johann/Ioan in other languages. Moreover, the Queen Elizabeth II is Yelizaveta in Russian, Isabel in Spanish/Portuguese, Alžběta in Czech or Elžbieta in Lithuanian. It obviously would be very strange from her if she asks to call herself in the English way in every language. Next example. An American guy has a Chinese friend Zhāng Xú. The American calls his friend /tʃæŋ ʃuː/ in English. But the Chinese insists to speak his name properly /ʈʂɑŋ˥ ɕy˧˥/ in spite of that the American does not know Chinese at all. Would it all be strange? I think it would.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:07, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Given that /ɑ/ is no less English than /æ/, I think Zhāng would be justified in insisting on the more accurate vowel. Otherwise I agree about translations. — Once upon a time I told my well-meaning but semiliterate boss that Mr Ikeda was on the phone, using those English vowels most similar to the Japanese vowels. He picked up and joyfully said, "Aikeda-sæ:n!" —Tamfang (talk) 20:05, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

the meaning of "and"

I wonder if "and" in the following context means "but" --- "When we started, the prevailing wisdom was that snark ruled the Internet," says Eli Pariser, a co-founder of Upworthy. "And we just had a really different sense of what works." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.249.222.171 (talk) 04:45, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

The difference between and and but (in this sense) is entirely connotative: their denotative meaning is identical. You can always use and where but might be expected, and in doing so you are choosing to ignore or not express the contrariety between what precedes and what follows. Of course that choice itself may convey further connotation. --ColinFine (talk) 11:18, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Malay mottoes in Jawi

Coat of arms of Malaysia (1963–1965)

Coat of arms of the Federated Malay States

Anyone know Jawi (Malay written using the Arabic alphabet) here? A volunteer is trying to vectorize the two coats of arms pictured on the right, and would like to know what the Arabic characters of the mottoes are. The motto of Malaysia is "Bersekutu Bertambah Mutu" ("Unity is Strength"), and the motto of the Federated Malay States was "Dipelihara Allah" ("Under Allah's Protection"). Thanks. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:49, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

• Thankfully you're not asking meaning; my reading Jawi is really rusty. If you already know what the words are, why not simply go through phonetically (Malay is a very phonetical language), with the guide at our Jawi script article? That should give a rough approximation which can be polished further (heck, the article even has the unicode for non-Arabic letters like nga (ڠ). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:57, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Urk. That might take a while for me! In the meantime, if anyone would like to lend a hand ... — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 09:14, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't know Jawi, but the Arabic letters correspond pretty much exactly to the Latin letters. Bersekutu Bertambah Mutu is "برسكوتو برتمبه موتو". Dipelihara Allah is "دڤـليهارا الله" (oddly enough I can see that "P" in editing mode, but it shows up as a box everywhere else). Adam Bishop (talk) 10:39, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Adam Bishop -- the same happens on my system; "editing mode" uses monospaced fonts, while non-editing display uses proportional fonts. The character is included in Arial Unicode MS and Courier New on my system, but not in Times New Roman...AnonMoos (talk) 23:32, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Wow, thanks. But I'm struggling a little to see how your transliterations correspond to the mottoes on the coats of arms, which seem much shorter. Could the mottoes have left out the vowel sounds? (I can see the p in Dipelihara on Mozilla Firefox without any problem.) — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 10:56, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. Short vowels are not normally written in Arabic script, whatever the language being written (though the decision of what counts as a short vowel may be rather arbitrary for some languages). In this case, the u are written, and some of the i' and a, but none of the e. --ColinFine (talk) 11:24, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, the Arabic doesn't have all the vowels that the Latin transliteration does. There are also some ligatures in the Arabic that group a few letters together. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:44, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

• Not to mention that, in many modern instances of Jawi text (older Jawi text was different), vowels in closed syllables generally aren't represented (I'm not sure about Malaysian, but for Indonesian I don't think a short/long vowel distinction is important, as there are generally only one or two possible vowels (allophones, almost always) represented by a graph; the graph e is the only one with three sounds associated with it: two phonemes and an allophone). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:44, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
• Based on what I can make out here, it's true for the Jawi in these logos: no vowels in closed syllables. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:45, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

All very intriguing – but could someone type out the Arabic characters? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 16:17, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

• Well, I suggested a perfectly valid way of doing it. برصکوتو برتبح موتو looks about right for the top one (I don't see an m in their "tambah"; that's somewhat odd, IMHO; is this from an official source?) Bottom would be دڤليعاراء لله. At least according to my comparison with the logos. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 16:43, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] Thanks! Probably better than my poor attempt:

• "Bersekutu Bertambah Mutu" ["BSKT BRTMBA MT"] – بــرـســکــتـ بــرـطــمــبــا مــت
• "Dipelihara Allah" ["DPLHR", and "Allah" copied from the Wikipedia article] – دڤلحر الله

The second motto seems more similar to what appears in the Federated Malay States coat of arms (though our graphic of the coat of arms seems to have been quite poorly rendered), but I'm still not seeing much similarity between the first motto and the transliteration above. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:18, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Crisco 1492: the "t" and the "m" in "bertambah" is the ligature I mentioned - it's a T with an M underneath, essentially. I think the two transcriptions I gave above are correct, by the way...Crisco's transcription with a saad in the first word doesn't look right to me (either that word has the three squiggly bits of a regular "siin", or it's the flat cursive type of the same letter). I don't know what else to say...for the first one the mottos are exactly the same in the two scripts, it's almost a straight one-to-one match, taking into account the phonology of the language fitting into the Arabic script. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:34, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

• There are limits, I must say; the "Allah" we've used doesn't look quite the same, for instance. That the files are somewhat small and pixelated doesn't help much. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:18, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Managed to get in touch with a friend who knows Jawi. You may be interested to know that the transliteration of "Dipelihara Allah" is "د ﭬﻠﻴﻬﺎﺭا اﻟﻠﻪ". It doesn't look much like what is shown in the image because the latter is in a calligraphic form. Also, the second circular symbol from the left seems out of place. It could be a misplaced hamzat waṣl that usually appears on top the alif.

It's late where I am. My friend will transliterate "Bersekutu Bertambah Mutu" another day. But he did say the word "Bertambah" was in a "show-off simplified form", so that's what may be causing some confusion. Adam is probably right about the T–M ligature. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 16:39, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Help with Korean word

I listened to a piece of traditional Korean music, performed by two musicians on a geomungo and a pungul buk. The tune's title was listed as "Sinkwaedonnryu". I know close to nothing about the Korean language, and google hasn't helped. Can someone here translate this title? Thank you in advance! ---Sluzzelin talk 13:37, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

In case this helps for context, the piece was performed by Park Min-Ji on the komungo (geomungo), and "Sinkwaedonnryu" might or might not be a composition of her own. ... Kjoonlee, where are you? ... haven't seen you in quite a while ....---Sluzzelin talk 09:14, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

"Sinkwaedonnryu" is a personal name, Sin Kwae-dong/申 快童 (1919-1987) + ryu(pa)/流/school. See [2], [3], [4], and [5]. Oda Mari (talk) 10:26, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Most excellent, thank you! ---Sluzzelin talk 11:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Is there a better word than "homophagy"?

Not aesthetically, but to describe life forms that eat life forms (most non-plants). Google treats it like an Urban Dictionary term for eating men (androphagy), but my high school science teacher taught me it in the first sense. How wrong was she? InedibleHulk (talk) 23:04, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

1) I'm not sure 'homophagy' is a word that's ever been much used.

2) It would appear to mean 'eat things that are like oneself' - in other words, cannibalism.

3) 'Androphagy' would indeed be 'eating men'. 'Anthropophagy' is the usual technical term for human cannibalism - Greek anthropos, 'human'.

4) Relatedly, the 'homo' element here is unconnected with the Latin homo, 'a human being' - here, it's a Greek element meaning 'same'. AlexTiefling (talk) 23:15, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

The usual term for organisms that require other organisms for nutrition is heterotrophs, I believe. Deor (talk) 23:21, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes! That was actually the word I was misremembering. My science teacher didn't suck, after all. I did. No longer! Thanks.

As to "like oneself", in the wider context of life, corn is more kin to cow than to light or minerals. In a narrower context, Jeffrey Dahmer wasn't a homophage, either, preferring "dark meat". But yes, it's clearly now not a good word to describe anyone. Still beats "homovore", for the Greek/Latin clash. Apparently works for an album name, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:54, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

But Dahmer did mostly eat homos, so in that sense he was a homophage! ;-) Pais (talk) 16:12, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Hilarious. AlexTiefling (talk) 16:25, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Regarding Anthropophagy, the distinction between endocannibalism and exocannibalism is worth noting. Socially, how nearly the things one eats are 'like oneself' is often of significance. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:25, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Looking closer at the heterotroph article, it seems the more precise word for our thing is "organotrophy". InedibleHulk (talk) 00:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Word for "study of the sun"?

A google search came up with nothing for this.. does anyone have any suggestions? Or is such a word just nonexistent? Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 23:35, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

If you want to coin a single word, an obvious candidate would be "heliology", but the actually-used term seems to be "solar astronomy"... AnonMoos (talk) 23:50, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Heliology was my initial choice as well (it sounds nice!), but I was reluctant to include it in an article. I don't know why 'solar astronomy' didn't come to me. Thanks! That'll work great for me. Flipandflopped (Discuss, Contribs) 00:20, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

We do have an article on heliophysics too, though I suppose that wouldn't completely cover "study of the sun". ---Sluzzelin talk 11:08, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Heliology does appear in Chambers dictionary (11th edition) so would not be a coining, but solar astronomy is clearer.----Ehrenkater (talk) 12:18, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

according to this, the term heliology is archaic. --EditorMakingEdits (talk) 13:01, 12 May 2014 (UTC)