Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 June 19

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June 19

Editor who speaks Norwegian?

Hi. I'd like a smidgen of help from someone who speaks Norwegian. Anyone? --Dweller (talk) 10:56, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Speaks or understands? If you want translation from written Norwegian (preferably Bokmål) into English I'll have a go, but if it's the other way I'd struggle. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:46, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

For questions of this nature, there is always Editors who speak Norwegian.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:51, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Native speaker, will be happy to help! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 12:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll drop by your talk page. --Dweller (talk) 12:46, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Does the word orphan apply to adult children?

The word orphan (typically) refers to a child with no parents (for example, a child whose two parents are deceased). If an adult – say, someone in their fifties or sixties – has two deceased parents, is he properly called an "orphan", also? Or not? (I read the Wikipedia article, and I'd like further input, if any.) Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 14:26, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The OED defines an orphan as "a person, esp. a child, both of whose parents are dead", so describing an independent adult as one is technically correct, I suppose, but rather meaningless, especially after the age of 50 or so. The idea of adult orphans features farcically in The Pirates of Penzance - the Major-General begs for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan, it having been previously established that the pirates are so soft-hearted that they never attack orphans, so all their potential victims plead orphanhood. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:26, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The word origin means "parentless child", which is normal usage.[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baseball Bugs (talk • contribs) 16:43, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

As others have mentioned, it would be technically correct, but odd. The term orphan is usually reserved for underage children who lack parents. However, I have sometimes seen it used to denote parentless adults in cases where the relationship was especially close or where they continued co-habitating until the death of the parent. I suppose it could be used to convey the sense that they feel just as helpless as a young orphan would be. Matt Deres (talk) 18:15, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Clifton Webb, for example. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:32, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

• Orphan comes from the Greek reflex of the PIE root *orbh- which meant bereft of a father or deprived of free status. Cinderella, raised by and forced to drudge for her wicked step-mother, would be an orphan in the original sense, while an established adult would not. μηδείς (talk) 18:46, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
• I think calling an adult an "orphan" is weird. If I heard an adult called an orphan, I would probably even assume it meant they had been orphaned as a child. 109.152.147.80 (talk) 03:17, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
  • My loving parents died when I was a fully independent adult, and I would never refer to myself as an "orphan". But when I think of my parents, there are definitely feelings associated with the connotations of the word "orphan" deep in my heart. The sense of loss and being somewhat adrift persists even after many years. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:28, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry for your loss. Thanks for sharing your input. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:54, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:54, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Why is "may" optional?

I hear these idiomatic phrases often.

• God bless.
• God damn it!

When I look up the etymology, I notice that the terms originally had "may", which makes sense, because the action verbs are supposed to be subjunctive, not indicative. But I still don't get why the "may" should be removed. Why remove the "may"? 66.213.29.17 (talk) 15:15, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

This source (which isn't necessarily the best) shows that the oldest use they could find (older than the online Oxford dictionary) lacked a "may."

My guess would be that the "may" was probably inserted for theological reasons: to avoid sounding like one was commanding God, but may still implied in most other uses. Ian.thomson (talk) 15:27, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The subjunctive in English is not always expressed periphrastically, with a modal auxiliary. See (before it gets archived) the thread #The Our Father near the top of this page, which discusses "Thy kingdom come" and "Thy will be done" as subjunctive expressions. Deor (talk) 15:30, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Yep, hortatory subjunctive is what I thought of. Often the grammatical mode can be sort of implied (and is sometimes somewhat ambiguous). SemanticMantis (talk) 17:56, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually Optative mood may be more appropriate. I learned this stuff through Ancient Greek and Latin, so I'm a little rough on what gets called what in a language like English. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:01, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

It is indeed an optative usage of the English subjunctive, but the Germanic languages don't have an optative mood separately conjugated from the subjunctive. Periphrasis such with modal auxiliaries such as "may..." or "would that..." are typical of modern English, but they still govern the subjunctive: "May he show mercy", not *may he shows mercy or *may him to show mercy. μηδείς (talk) 18:53, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Side question on optative/subjunctive terminology

So the mode is subjunctive, but the semantics are optative, but we don't call it an optative because it's not morphologically marked? But the subjunctive is not morphologically marked either, as you say, we use auxiliaries. I understand you're reporting conventional terminology, but I don't see why we don't say "let them eat cake" is an optative form in English, and say that "If I were to eat cake, I'd be happy" is a subjunctive construction. Or is it just that optative mood isn't sufficiently distinct from subjunctive in languages that don't inflect verbs to indicate mood? Why is wishing optative in Ancient Greek but considered subjunctive in English? SemanticMantis (talk) 20:49, 19 June 2015 (UTC) Um, I kinda think you've got those two backwards, if I'm understanding correctly. Or at least you're putting together different uses of the English subjunctive that are confusing in context of the discussion. In English, at least in the traditional interpretation of these things, it's the present subjunctive that is used for third-person imperatives. "Let them eat cake" is a third-person imperative rendered with an auxiliary, whereas "John eat cake" would be a third-person imperative in the subjunctive. It sounds odd in today's English, but we have plenty of fixed phrases that use it ("God save us", "Devil take the hindmost", etc). I don't think that's "optative". The other major use of the present subjunctive is in sentences like "it is important that you be prompt", which is not a third-person imperative. I'm not quite sure what this one is called. I was calling it jussive for a while but I don't think that's exactly right. The optative can be rendered using the past subjunctive in phrases like "I wish I were seventeen again". --Trovatore (talk) 21:02, 19 June 2015 (UTC) Maybe I got the examples switched, but here was my rationale: I got "If I were to $foo" straight from Subjunctive_mood#English, which uses that as an example of the future subjunctive. I got "let them eat cake" my analogy to "may you have a long life" in the optative mood article. Another more canonically optative form would be "Would that I ate cake!" - which is how I was instructed to formulaically translate the ancient Greek optative of wish into English. Another way of putting my question - why do they say that English has no morphological optative, yet acknowledge "may you have a long life" as an "optative meaning", while we consider English to have a subjunctive, even though it is not marked morphologically in the verb ("I owned" is the example for past indicative, while "that I owned" is the example for past subjunctive). To my eye, neither is marked morphologically on the verb, and both convey semantic information via auxiliary words. So why not say English has an Optative just like a subjunctive? Or say that it has neither as morphological grammatical modes, but has both as constructed forms? Maybe the answer is that the verb to be does have a morphological subjunctive, even if almost no other verbs do? SemanticMantis (talk) 21:27, 19 June 2015 (UTC) I am not sure this "future subjunctive" idea is really standard. I would call it past subjunctive. The "were" is certainly morphologically past tense. The past subjunctive is morphologically marked only in the "were" case, whereas the present subjunctive is marked in the third-person singular, and in all persons and numbers with "to be". But I don't think "may you have a long life" is subjunctive at all; it's just "may" functioning as a modal auxiliary. --Trovatore (talk) 21:32, 19 June 2015 (UTC) SemanticMantis, there are two basic considerations. First, the subjunctive in general expresses things counter to fact. So, "It's important that he arrives on time" is indicative (it states a fact, and gives a reason he should get a raise) while "It's important that he arrive on time" is subjunctive, because the implication is that he may be late. In English, the subjunctive and indicative differ in certain forms, especially the third person present. We can also say in English, "Would that he arrive on time" which is an optative construction, but the subjunctive form is used, as there is no separate ending for the optative. In Greek, however, there are separate verb endings for all three moods. Indicative is "he looses", λύει; subjunctive is "that he loose", λῡ́ῃ; and optative is "would that he loose", λῡ́οι. (The verb wikt:λύω "I (set) loose" in Greek examples for technical reasons, as it lacks irregular forms.) Since the conjugational endings between the indicative, subjunctive, and optative are all different in Ancient Greek, we speak of three separate moods in the conjugation. (The optative in the Ancient Greek verb is characterized by an iota (i) after the stem vowel and before the personal ending.) Because English only has two sets of endings (which in many cases overlap) English is identified as having two moods in its verb conjugations, with the subjunctive having the role of both a counterfactual and as an optative. Eventually the optative also disappeared in Greek, with the subjunctive taking over its role there too. μηδείς (talk) 18:21, 20 June 2015 (UTC) User:Medeis thanks, that helps clear it up. I guess the subjunctive is sometimes morphologically marked, so that's enough to consider it a full mood, while optative never is, so it isn't. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:41, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Overuse of 'different' and 'separate'

It seems that everywhere my eyes or ears are focussed these days, I see and hear 'different' and 'separate' overused.

Typically, it's Australian media, which exposes me to reports such as "The longstanding local member is facing a challenge from nine different candidates in the upcoming election". I read that and I wonder whether the use of 'different' is to make sure that readers don't think the nine candidates are all identical clones of each other.

Or "Victoria has had a horror weekend on the roads, with six different people killed in four separate accidents". Again, no doubt just to clarify that it wasn't one person killed six times in different places and (probably but not necessarily) at different times, a really stunning case of multilocation and multiple resurrection that would put Christ to shame.

Is this just a Down Under phenomenon, or do the media of the other allegedly civilised/developed countries engage in this rubbish as well?

(I can hardly imagine the reporters from third-or-higher-world countries ever falling for this juvenile "at-all-costs-copy-whatever-the-others-are-saying-no-matter-how-absurd-it-sounds" trap. But if they try really hard, they might become developed and then they'll qualify to talk as we do. Hooray!) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:51, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I haven't noticed this in the US. In the first case they may be trying to say that there are nine candidates, each challenging him in separate campaigns, versus all working together to "unseat the king" with a joint campaign. In the second case the "different people" is truly silly, unless they mean to distinguish them from conjoined twins, but the "four different accidents" is probably trying to say they are four unrelated accidents. (Related accidents can happen due to a shared hazardous condition, like a blizzard, road flooding, or object in the road.) StuRat (talk) 01:53, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

• That would be interesting if one of the six victims had been killed in three of the four separate accidents. It's Orson-Wellesian bad writing if the announcer is reading from a script; off the top of his head it's just the normal sort of disfluency one can expect in rushed utterances. The first sentence sounds fine to me, the announcer is emphasizing that there are nine Black Riders, not just a few. The second example is not anything I would expect to hear or can say I have ever heard in the US. μηδείς (talk) 22:13, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Yes, I was rather suspecting it's just the TV channels and newspapers typically trying to out-"shock! horror!" each other, which is why some rags have a standard huge black headline taking up almost half the front page, as if there's a new world war breaking out every single day. And on TV, everything is dramatised to hell, so that every minor or even just-barely-newsworthy development in an ongoing story is "a bizarre new twist in the XXX saga", and each minor issue in politics is "XXX has been plunged into crisis", and every time the police are called to a suburban incident, we're startled to learn that "XXX is in lockdown". So, from this histrionic perspective, it's simply not enough to tell us that 6 people were killed on the roads today; no, it has to be "6 different people" and "4 separate accidents". As for "horror smashes", don't get me started. But I'm somewhat surprised to learn this "different/separate" thing is not known in other parts. Maybe we're a journalistically creative nation after all. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:42, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

"a bizarre new twist in the XXX saga" lol μηδείς (talk) 18:00, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

We have other horrors in news reporting in the US. They are apparently afraid of being sued for mentioning that anybody is wanted for a crime, so instead of calling them a criminal, they call them a "gentleman", and throw in lots of "alleged"s, as in "The alleged gentleman allegedly shot the alleged neighbor's alleged dog for allegedly barking in his alleged neighbor's alleged back yard". The police also don't want to call anyone a suspect, for fear they might run or lawyer up, so everyone is now a "person of interest". So, when a "gentleman" becomes a "person of interest" they know they are in trouble. StuRat (talk) 17:49, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually, even more than "person of interest" or the slightly more ambiguous "wanted for questioning", police and their media departments now use statements like "may have information related to", which the news has been using more frequently in the past few years in the U.S., such as "Here we see a video of a man unloading his gun into the chest of the store owner. If you have seen this man, he may have information related to the murder of the store clerk in the video. Please contact the local police department". Such abuses of the language are comical. Here are some recent examples: [2] and [3] --Jayron32 14:12, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

• Here's a story from today: ... he'll be remembered for coaching 718 games with six different clubs. As opposed to six identical clubs, maybe? And why not 718 "different" or "separate" games? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:23, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

• Well, there is always the possibility that some of the clubs merged. StuRat (talk) 18:14, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

I think this just another example of using semantic redundancy for emphasis. Wiktionary's entry writes "used for emphasis after numbers and other determiners of quantity", e.g. "Several different scientists all reached this conclusion at about the same time.". Wikipedia, on the other hand, does list it among pleonasms '"Different" or "separate" after numbers' (with examples). I wasn't able to find a lot in the form of essays etc., let alone anything on increased overuse. (Maybe it's not that common a pet peeve :-) ---Sluzzelin talk 09:04, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Probably a shortcut for saying 6 scientists not on the same team. StuRat (talk) 18:12, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

By the way, Jack, though I am one of those horrible descriptivists, I recently got a thrill out of reading David Foster Wallace's "Tense Present" and thought you might enjoy it as well ... are you a SNOOT? ---Sluzzelin talk 09:30, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

And proud of it! -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 13:25, 23 June 2015 (UTC)