Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 May 5

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May 5

What is the difference between ascribe and prescribe?

^Topic ScienceApe (talk) 05:42, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Both words are derived from a Latin word meaning to write, but their meanings have nothing in common.

• To ascribe is to "refer to a supposed cause, source, or author". For example, "he ascribed her frequent spelling errors to dyslexia."
• To prescribe something is to "to officially tell someone to use [it] as a remedy or treatment", or to "make [it] an official rule". For example, "the doctor prescribed penicillin for the infection" or "the US Postal Service prescribes a set of two-letter abbreviations for the states".

--50.100.193.30 (talk) 06:43, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Ascribing writes the past from the present. Prescribing writes tomorrow today. The latin prefix is ad (at, near), but I suppose that looked sounded stupid in English, so they dropped the D. Pre- has become more English than Latin. It means what it obviously does. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:19, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

The prefix didn't look anything. With extremely few exceptions, language change happens in real language, ie. what people speak, not in the written language. --ColinFine (talk) 07:56, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, and in this case the 'change' occurred in Latin "ascribere", before it even passed into the English language. - Lindert (talk) 08:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Makes sense. Rescribed. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

New incorrect answers are hereby proscribed, and surviving remnants must be exscribed forthwith. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:38, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Mine eye doth not descry the remnants thou describe. If ye be among us who would inscribe new truth, arise ye now, et cetera. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:24, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

[D]escribest, unless you're using the subjunctive, which I doubt is called for here. --Trovatore (talk) 10:42, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I was pontificating generally. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:08, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Omne bonum. And to Trovatore, I knew, but I was trying to rhyme. Demi bonum. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:55, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Oddly enough, we have an Omne Bonum article, containing the word scripsit. Our article for that is a rudimentary word processor. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:58, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Parerga and Paralipomena

Which one of these two sources, Wikipedia Or Britannica, are more reliable on the meaning of that title? Any new suggestions, maybe? Thanks. Omidinist (talk) 07:13, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Your link for Britannica is faulty. I'm guessing you mean [1] where it's called "Minor Works". "Appendices & Omissions" is more literal (although "appendix" is a bit of a stretch for "parergon"), which is not to say it's better. "Incidental works and leftover matters" or "Incidental and leftover works" would be very literal translations. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 08:19, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks, and sorry for that faulty link. Someone could have mentioned that to me days ago. Omidinist (talk) 19:06, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Is it fair to say that English evolved from Latin?

^Topic ScienceApe (talk) 07:16, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

As a Wize Woman once said in a Yahoo! Answer, "I hope it helps." Times sure have changed. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:25, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

That Yahoo answer is extremely oversimplified, as well as erroneous in parts, but the main point—that English "evolved" as a branch of West Germanic rather than from Latin—is valid. We've actually been adopting and adapting Latin words since the time of Old English, but that doesn't mean that we speak a descendant of Latin. Deor (talk) 12:14, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

The answer I referred to was just a link to our Wiki article. Never trust a man named catbarf, my grandfather told me. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:27, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

One would think that if there is any argument to make for Latin it would be through Norman French to Anglo Norman. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:40, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

English did not evolve from Latin. It evolved from old Anglo-Saxon, though many loanwords were adapted into English from Latin (through Norman French). The fact that many loanwords were added to English doesn't mean it evolved from Latin, however, Historically, the development of English is from the Germanic branch of Indo-European, not the Romance branch. --Jayron32 12:51, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

What Jayron said. Virtually all Latin influence on English came by way of the French spoken by William the Conqueror and his Norman buddies, not directly from Latin. Evan ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:42, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

By most people's reckoning, there are more Latinate words than Saxon in the English lexicon, but if you count the words in conversation or writing, they are predominantly Saxon, ie. derived from Old English, and thus Germanic (see that same article for confirmation of this). This is the simplest basis (apart from the historical one) for claiming unequivocally that English is a Germanic language. Further, style guides will usually tell you that the native Saxon word is generally more natural and "earthier" (dare I say "terrestrial"?) than the Romance one. Old French/ Norman words occupy a particular register, but Latin and Greek words have come into English to expand the technical vocabulary and fill gaps and so on. My favourite example of gap-filling is the native word moon which uses the Latin word lunar for an adjective, whereas for highly technical words, it uses the Greek; for example a "moon geographer" is called a selenographer. IBE (talk) 14:41, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

At least to me a full answer would have to deal with structure not just (loan)words. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:31, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Quite. And English has the structure of a Germanic language, not a Romance one. AlexTiefling (talk) 18:21, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not arguing with you, but with 5 cases, 3 genders, and V2 word order, I'd like a reference (or an explanation) for how the structure of Old English persists in Modern English, or, failing that, what else you mean by Germanic structure. IBE (talk) 04:53, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

The examples I can think of off the top of my head are: the existence of only two synthetic tenses (present and past); the formation of the past and ppl by ablaut in root verbs and by a dental suffix in denominal verbs; the use of verbal prefixes which in some circumstances can be separated from their verb; a possessive ending in -s;. --ColinFine (talk) 10:16, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

All of the above. Additionally, Latin itself has a fairly flexible word order owing to its strong case-marking behaviour, but is SOV by default, and questions marked by suffixes. English, like Swedish, has relatively strict word order, SVO by default, with questions VSO. German has the same, with the additional rule (not seen in any of the others) that verbs come last in subordinate clauses. All the Germanic languages make extensive use of modal/auxiliary verbs, while Latin has a huge range of specialised verb forms instead (so in Latin there are words for 'about to be carried', 'fit to be carried', 'having been carried', 'it may have been carried' and so on). AlexTiefling (talk) 10:43, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Some good examples, but the ones that didn't come into English via Old English surely need a reference, that is, if you want to claim they are part of Germanic structure, rather than just found in a lot of Germanic languages. So the two-tense system looks like a winner, and (afaict) so does the modal/ auxiliary system (alluded to in the article Germanic languages, so I won't argue). I don't credit the word order thing, since it wasn't from Old English, and English had a fairly flexible word order, I think, until around the time of Shakespeare, though maybe a bit before (I can't find a reference). The ablaut is Indo-European, and also found in Latin, although the "-ed" ending is mentioned in the article Germanic languages. In short, the article on Germanic languages accepts only some of these, so I would ask for a reference for anything else. IBE (talk) 13:03, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

The fact that the structures of Modern English have changed since the time when the predecessors of Modern English and other Germanic Languages were mutually intelligible doesn't mean that they do not share a genetic relationship. The changes were incremental and evolutionary in nature, and direct links can be traced backwards to Proto-Germanic and not in any way to Classical Latin. That's what makes English a Germanic, and not Romance, language, despite borrowing words from Romance languages and slowly modifying other rules of grammar and syntax over the centuries. --Jayron32 16:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, but I think the "genetic" idea is a little bit of a false analogy in the first place, as applied to languages. Languages aren't born, and they don't have parents. A closer biological analogy would be something like the way bacteria evolve, including bacterial conjugation. In that sense, English does have "genes" from Latin. --Trovatore (talk) 22:30, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Regardless of which word to describe the process, don't confuse the fact that English is a Germanic language and not a Romance one. Regardless of how many individual words it borrowed from Latin, and regardless of how much syntax and grammar has gradually changed over the years. The issue is the process that occurs, not the arbitrary words you use to describe it. You could call it "Bob" and it wouldn't make English NOT a Germanic language. --Jayron32 23:08, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, it's your description of the actual process I take issue with. English has both Germanic and Latinate "heritage". It may have more of the Germanic, but it's a mix. --Trovatore (talk) 23:26, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

It's clear English is related to Germanic languages in a specific way that it is not related to Latinate languages, which is what is meant here. Or do you reject the entire notion that languages exist in analysable families? AlexTiefling (talk) 23:46, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I reject the notion that they are necessarily in a tree structure, if that's what you mean. Or rather, I don't deny that this might be a useful notion for linguists, but I think that it's a quantitative rather than qualitative distinction. --Trovatore (talk) 23:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I see what you mean; I agree in as much as it's not at all self-evident that a language must have a single unique predecessor. However, in the actual case at hand, I think there's a credible historical argument for treating English as continuous back to Anglo-Saxon and into Old Saxon, and French as continuous back into Langue d'Oil, Vulgar Latin and Old Latin, but not English into any form of Latin in the same way. AlexTiefling (talk) 00:03, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

That may well be. I'm not an expert on that. --Trovatore (talk) 00:11, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

About the concept of "genetic": it is a frequent error to think that the linguistic use of the term "genetic" implies an analogy to biological descent and the transmission of "genes". In fact, the linguistic use simply has nothing to do with "genes"; it's directly based on the basic, original Greek, meaning "concerning the origins". If I'm not mistaken, 19th-century linguists were using the term well before the biological theory of genetics evolved; if anything, biologists borrowed the concept from us, not the other way round. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:18, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

(Note that I'm answering Jayron's post, "The fact that...") The original point was that English has the structure of a Germanic language, that is, it has this structure now. You are using a different argument, a historical one. I don't deny any of these, but I was questioning the "structure" bit, which depends on what the case is now. Or on what the cases are now, but let's not get tense about all this. IBE (talk) 01:50, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

For another European language with a lot of Romance words (40 - 55 % of its vocabulary), plus a decent portion of more recent English loanwords (6 - 20%), yet the language is categorized as neither Romance nor Germanic, not even Indo-European, see Maltese language (percentages from the article's subsection on vocabulary). ---Sluzzelin talk 16:15, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

• A language is considered genetically transmitted if it is conveyed from mother to child with retention of basic grammar and vocabulary, subject to regular linguistic change like slight shifts in the pronunciation of phonemes or gradual changes in accepted grammar. An example of a non-genetically transmitted language would be a creole such as Haitian creole which was an imperfect pidgin form of French originally learnt by adult African slaves without a common language and with a total reanalysis of the grammar and an abrupt shift in phonemes and vocabulary. Now that newly created language is transmitted from mother to child and is evolving genetically.

Genetically, English is 100% a Germanic language. It retains the typically Germanic characteristics such as the weak versus strong verb distinction, something like 94/100 of its basic Swadesh list vocabulary has been retained. At no time has the transmission by native speakers, mother to child been interrupted, although there have been adults who have learned English as a second language, and a large influx of, especially French and Latin through borrowing by adults.

That influence is so great that we have even incorporated affixes like pre- pro- anti- in- dis- -ize -able- -ation -eer into English and now apply them to English root stock. But the historically attested continuity of transmission, and the Germanic nature of our basic grammar and vocabulary disallow any denial English is a fully Germanic language. The standard text is Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics by Sarah Grey Thomason , Terrence Kaufmanμηδείς (talk) 18:02, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Out of curiosity: Which 6 entries of the Swadesh list are (presumably) Norman- or Latin-based? Thank you. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 13:47, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't feel like going through the whole list, but the first one I see is #16, person. Deor (talk) 14:44, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't remember which list it was, by I do remember 94/100 being non-latinate, so I assume it was the 100 or so-ish list, User:Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (and thanks, User:Deor. Besides person there was face, because, mountain, forest and river. In any case, the vast majority in any list is of Germanic stock. (There are also Germanic, yet dialect borrwings fom Norse, like sky. The ultimate determinative of genetic descent which we can verify historically is that there is no point at which English isn't being learnt as a first language by children whose mothers are native speakers. Even children whose parents both have a foreign accent will have children without accents if their peers lack foreign accents. In languages where there's no historical record, retention of basic grammar and vocabulary and regular reconstruction are used as proofs of genetic descent. μηδείς (talk) 03:35, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Traditional instruction in Latin

How did medieval monks and other educated people learn Latin in the Middle Ages? I'm thinking specifically about Northern Europe in the 13th century but any information would help. I understand they used Donatus and Priscianus for grammar - but what would they read? Was Caesar already standard back then? Haukur (talk) 14:23, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

The list of authors in the Medieval Latin article might help. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:43, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I always asked myself this question. I think, giving the fact that there were no many (if not at all) widely available bilingual Latin (and Greek, Church Slavonic, Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit and so on, if we consider other countries and continents) dictionaries and textbooks at that time, the main source was personal interaction with the teacher. Knowledge of Latin was being passed from generation to generation. This is why monasteries and universities were so important.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:04, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Take a look at the sources listed for the January 5 lesson in this syllabus. If you can track a couple of them down, you should have a definitive answer to your question. Marco polo (talk) 18:12, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

The Latin text that medieval monks read above and beyond all others was the Vulgate. Angr (talk) 18:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I read the 1909 book, but it lists only Latin-Latin reference books. Not too useful for those who didn't know Latin at all.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 01:24, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I want to acknowledge...

How does one say "I want to acknowledge everyone whom I should have acknowledged but did not" in French? I came up with:

Je veux reconnaître tous ceux que je devrais reconnaître mais n'ai pas reconnu

But how do I avoid repeating reconnaitre the third time? Thanks. --Bowlhover (talk) 18:11, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

French does not allow the same kind of ellipsis of verbs as English, but with pronouns, you can avoid repeating nouns. My French is not very good, but how about something like the following, corrected by a native speaker: "Je veux rendre la reconnaissance à tous ceux qui la méritent, mais ne l'ont pas reçu." Marco polo (talk) 20:35, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Here would be a way of conveying the thought succinctly: "J'aimerais reconnaître la contribution de tous, y compris ceux que j'ai oubliés". But that's extremely generic. You can't just recognize someone in French: "je reconnais M. X" means literally "I can pick Mr. X out of a crowd". Therefore, you have to recognize something such as the presence, participation or contribution of a person, so the wording would be adjusted depending on context, to explain what exactly deserves recognition. --Xuxl (talk) 12:29, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Agree. To be closer to the original, what about Je veux remercier tous ceux que je n'ai pas remercié alors que j'aurais dû le faire or Je veux dire ma reconnaissance à tous ceux que je n'ai pas remercié alors que j'aurais dû le faire? Heavy style (in French)... — AldoSyrt (talk) 15:35, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Bible passages

Normally, when someone refers to a Bible passage in writing, it would appear as such: for example, "John 3:16". What does it mean when a Bible passage has the notation of "cf." in front of it? For example, my religious calendar has a quotation. Underneath the quotation, it says "Cf. Luke 2:51". I read the Wikipedia article on "cf.". I don't understand why would the calendar use this notation; why not just list the actual Bible passage (chapter and verse) to which the quote is attributed? If it matters, the quote is: "And he went down with them and was subject to them. Cf. Luke 2:51". What does this mean? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:58, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what translation the biblical quotations on your calendar come from, but in the KJV Luke 2:51 begins "And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them ...", and I don't see any translations here that omit the reference to Nazareth (for one thing). So presumably you're supposed to "compare" the text of Bible verse because the words on the calendar aren't an exact quotation. Deor (talk) 22:34, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm. OK. So, what you say makes sense as far as "comparing" the actual quote with the quote they placed on the calendar. But, why would they do that? Why not just put the "real" quote on the calendar page? The actual passage? Especially in a case like this, where they really didn't make meaningful changes? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:16, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Who knows? Is the quotation for Mother's Day, perchance? Maybe the compilers of the calendar wanted to make the point that even Jesus was obedient to his mom, without introducing irrelevancies like "and came to Nazareth". Deor (talk) 23:59, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

It is a monthly calendar. And this quote is placed on the month of May. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:28, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I suggest the compiler had only a hazy idea of what "cf" means, and/or maybe he's saying "I wanted to keep this quote as brief as possible, but if you want to know the complete sentence from which it came, see Luke 2:51". Obviously, going to the trouble of spelling all that out would have been inimical to his purpose, so he had to find a much more concise solution. He could have achieved the same result with an ellipsis (...) in place of "and came to Nazareth"; actually, a better result, because it would not have raised questions in the minds of readers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:19, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing: why didn't he just use ellipses? Maybe, they (subtly) wanted to encourage you to actually read the Bible, to open up a Bible and find out the real quote for yourself. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:31, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Maybe. But history is rife with people who cherrypicked Bible passages to push an agenda. Every calendar company has an obvious primary one: sell calendars. Beyond that, who knows why they need the money, but many have tried to make sure nobody doublechecked. I don't usually cite the musings of bloggers, but this might at least give you an idea.

I do often cite Petyr Baelish. "A man with no motive is a man no one suspects. If 'they' don't know who you are or what you want, 'they' can't know what you plan to do next." I've modified that somewhat. Find out how Sundays at 9, only on HBO! InedibleHulk (talk) 05:01, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Ironically enough, Luke 2:50 goes "And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them." Or, as God's Word® says "But they didn't understand what he meant." InedibleHulk (talk) 05:18, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:55, 7 May 2014 (UTC)