Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 July 13

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July 13

جنيفر (pronunciation of Arabic version of name Jennifer)

Here at Wikipedia, the given name Jennifer is said to be spelled as جنيفر in Arabic. How is this pronounced or spelled with Latin letters? 83.251.77.222 (talk) 17:40, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

There may be several ways to make up an Arabic equivalent for Jennifer. If one sticks to what you wrote the most likely vocalizations would be جِنِيفِرْ or جَنِيفِرْ so Jinīfir or Janīfir. But the Arabic Wikipedia article for Jennifer Aniston (for example) gives جينيفر أنيستون so there the name would be vocalized جِينِيفِرْ so Jīnīfir. On the Arabic Wikipedia both forms seem to be equally common. Contact Basemetal here 17:56, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Strengths and weaknesses

I hear some people say they have a "weakness for cookies" or "weakness for sweets". I initially thought they meant they did not like cookies or sweets, but then that didn't really fit the context. So, I figured that they really meant that they "could not resist the temptation to eat" a cookie. Somehow, the appetite of cookies had become their weakness, and they must succumb to the power of the cookie. Is there a known equivalent for "strength"? "I have a strength for cookies" just doesn't make sense to me, which may suggest that "weakness for" is really idiomatic. How old is this usage anyway? 66.213.29.17 (talk) 20:07, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the weakness part comes from the speaker's will being weak against those things, and it is idiomatic. A strength for cookies is non-sensical to my native ears, and I'm fairly certain it's not a matter of dialect either. The idiom dates back to at least 1700 according to this site. I'm fairly certain I've heard British and Australian speakers use the term, so it makes sense that it dates back to the pre-colonial era. Ian.thomson (talk) 20:18, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the 1700 date is supported by The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms (p.202) and the idiom is certainly in common use in the UK. Alansplodge (talk) 20:28, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

The OED gives two possibilities. "An unreasonable or self-indulgent liking or inclination for (a person or thing)" from 1712: 'I must own my Weakness for Glory'; and "Something for which one has an unreasonable liking" from 1813: 'Nor wine nor lust Were of his weaknesses'.Myrvin (talk) 20:31, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

You could say "My strength is my ability to resist sweets" which is the opposite of "My weakness is my inability to resist sweets". However, the short form doesn't really work for "strength". StuRat (talk) 20:47, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

You're right - "strength for cookies" doesn't work. But- uses like "Strong vs. X" or "Strong against X" have plenty of usage as an opposite to weakness in various gaming communities (everything from Dungeons & Dragons to Skyrim to Pokemon, etc.). E.g. undead zombies may be weak vs. fire and strong vs. cold. See TV Tropes' Elemental paper rock scissors [1] for an overview in popular fiction. Using this type terminology and avoiding idiom, we could say that Alice is weak in regard to resisting the temptation of cookies, while Bob is strong in regard to the temptation of cookies. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:49, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, but what about Carol and Ted? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:55, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

There's an old song on this subject, which may help explain. The vocal begins about 1 minute in:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAfVQpzQB3g ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:51, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

It strikes me that the 2nd OED definition is subtly different. This is exemplified by: "My weakness is cookies". You might have: "My strength is my modesty", but it seems unlikely. Myrvin (talk) 21:09, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

yes, the phrase is from a time when "sins" were a thing, people understood the allure of evil, man was evil by default and succumbing to evil was weakness. Asmrulz (talk) 22:16, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Some still consider an inability to resist any temptation, even food, to be a moral weakness. StuRat (talk) 22:19, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

That would be the Mae West syndrome. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:46, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

they are getting fewer. today these things tend to be explained away with having had a bad childhood, some medical condition, or society having failed the person. Also, being "authentic" etc Asmrulz (talk) 22:39, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

As told to "Officer Krupke" in West Side Story. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:46, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

is your point that the West Side Story is from the 50's and I said "today"? That's no contradiction. Social romanticism (man is good by default) is that old Asmrulz (talk) 23:00, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

No, I mean that "explaining away" bad behavior is not that recent. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:52, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

"In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence, and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaint, and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.
Listening as I do every day to the accounts people give of their lives, I am struck by the very small part in them which they ascribe to their own efforts, choices, and actions. (...)"Asmrulz (talk) 23:21, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

The man you quote, Theodore Dalrymple, was a prison doctor and psychiatrist - not a man used to seeing people at their best. Traditionally, prisoners particularly, ascribe their plight to other agencies. Dalrymple also seems to lean rather a lot to the right politically. Again traditionally, the British would always tend to downplay their personal involvement in anything good that happens. I would have thought that was going away rather than increasing. Myrvin (talk) 06:40, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

HOWEVER, after defending my fellow Brits, I see this is straying much too far from the original question, and into dangerous political territory. I wonder if the questioner is satisfied. Myrvin (talk) 08:23, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Complacency and denial dominate public as well as private discourse, and when a little of the unpleasant side of contemporary English reality is allowed an airing, a damage-control exercise swiftly ensues.
A newspaper recently asked me to go to Blackpool, a northern English resort town on the Irish Sea, to describe the conduct of the people who go there for a weekend. Blackpool has never been a place of great refinement and has long attracted people who cannot afford to go to more desirable places for their holidays. (...) But Blackpool was, within living memory, a resort of innocent fun, with donkey rides and Punch-and-Judy shows on the beach (...)
This (...) innocence has departed.(...) Fun now means public drunkenness on a mass scale, screaming in the streets, and the frequent exposure of naked buttocks to passersby. Within moments of arriving on the street along the beach, which was ankle-deep in discarded fast-food wrappings (the smell of stale fat obliterates completely the salt smell of the sea), I saw a woman who had pulled down her slacks and tied a pair of plastic breasts to her bare buttocks, while a man crawled after her on the sidewalk, licking them.(...)
On the day after the publication of my article, I appeared briefly on the BBC's main breakfast-time radio program, which has an audience of several million. The interviewer was an intelligent and cultivated woman, and having briefly and accurately summarized for the readers my account of what I saw in Blackpool, she then asked me, "Aren't you being a toff?"—that is to say, a social and cultural snob.
The question was, of course, a loaded one, with many layers of deeply derogatory implication. I in turn asked her whether she would herself bare her buttocks to passing strangers, and if she wouldn't, why not? She declined to answer this question (...)
Not long after the interview about my experiences in Blackpool, the BBC broadcast letters from a few listeners, who charged that I had failed to understand the nature of working-class culture. They used the word "culture" here in the anthropological sense of the sum total of a way of life, but they were also taking cunning and dishonest advantage of the word's connotations of Bach and Shakespeare to insinuate that the wearing of plastic breasts on the Blackpool promenade is indistinguishable in value from the B-Minor Mass or the sonnets.
The liberal assumption, in this as in most things, is that to understand is to approve (or at least to pardon), and therefore my disapproval indicated a lack of understanding. But strangely enough, the letters that the BBC and the newspaper that published the original article forwarded to me—those they hadn't broadcast or published—wholly endorsed my comments. They were from Blackpool residents and from working-class people elsewhere who passionately denied that working-class culture had always consisted of nothing but mindless obscenity. Several writers spoke very movingly of enduring real poverty in childhood while maintaining self-respect and a striving for mental distinction. (...) http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_4_oh_to_be.html (italics mine)Asmrulz (talk) 10:02, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

What is all this nonsense, and what does it have to do with the question? This is not the place to vent your personal bitterness. Myrvin (talk) 10:16, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

People need to know. Also, your charge that he's right-wing. Ok, I'm shutting up. Asmrulz (talk) 10:21, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Just as in the US, where there are also areas with that type of vacationers (mainly the "Spring Break" destinations), I'm sure that there are other locations for more wholesome family fun. Branson, Missouri seems to market itself that way, for example. StuRat (talk) 16:47, 14 July 2015 (UTC)