Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 December 26

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 26

Latin Title

May someone translate this title for me, please: Insigniores orbitae cometarum proprietates. Omidinist (talk) 08:34, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

"Notable properties of comets' orbits"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:02, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, in spite of the question mark. And happy holidays! Omidinist (talk) 09:28, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

After Bugs' comical attempts to translate German on the Miscellaneous desk, it's amazing that he stumbled into a mostly-correct translation using Google Translate; "Particularly Notable Properties of the Orbit of Comets" would be more literally correct ("insigniores" is a comparative adjective, "more notable", "very notable", etc). I assume this refers to the book by Johann Heinrich Lambert. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:30, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

The OP liked where my answer led, so apparently it's you that's the comic. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:54, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Please, no resentment in this season of merrymaking. Omidinist (talk) 12:00, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Christmas isn't Christmas without gift-wrapped resents. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:24, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Which language easy or hard to learn base on first language

I see many list which language easy or hard to learn (example http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty) but always for people who first language is English. Where are lists for other first languages? Example I think if your first language is Korean then easier to learn Chinese and if your first language is Punjabi then easier to learn other Indian languages like Hindi or Tamil. --Curious Cat On Her Last Life (talk) 17:01, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Korean and Chinese are not at all closely related genetically or typographically; the first being polysyllabic with verbal endings, the second being essentially monosyllabic and having at least four distinctive tones, but no real grammatical endings (with the minor exceptions of er and men, depending on how one analyzes them). Instead, I have read that in many cases Korean and Japanese can often be translated into each other word for word as if they had almost identical grammars, but different vocabularies.

Likewise, Hindi and Tamil are related in the way Korean and Chinese are, with geographical proximity and interborrowing of words. But Hindi is much more closely related genetically to English than to Tamil. Tamil is agglutinating, with a very large number of word endings (for example, three noun cases, compared to a(n artificial) minimum of eight in Tamil. Tamil and the other Dravidian languages are not demonstrably related to Hindi, which is Indo-European.

To find languages easy to learn, look for genetically related languages (language family) with close geographic and cultural relationships, such as German, French and Spanish for English speakers. See Sprachbund and Standard Average European.

μηδείς (talk) 00:19, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I think that μηδείς's "typographically" is a typo for "typologically". -- Hoary (talk) 13:38, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Have a look at Language family and the linked lists. Basically, the more closely related a language, the easier it will be to learn. I needed to learn a couple of bantu languages while working in Africa. The first one was quite difficult, as it was totally unrealted the English. The second one was much easier, because it was fairly similar to the first one I had learned. Wymspen (talk) 11:22, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

If your first language is Tamil, which is a Dravidian language, then easier to learn Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu which are also Dravidian languages. I think I understand that part. Then how to know which languages (from different language family) are harder? Example, if your first language is Russian, then Arabic or Chinese harder to learn? The list says Tagalog harder to learn than Malay if your first language is English. But Tagalog and Malay are Austronesian languages so why? --Curious Cat On Her Last Life (talk) 13:10, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

If Russian is your sole first language and you speak no second language, then acquisition of either [any variety of] Arabic or [any variety of] Chinese is likely to be tough. But there's no formula by which one can estimate language difficulty. (In particular, straightforward and major differences do not necessarily pose any major problem. As an example, a monoglot speaker of a language whose standard (or obligatory) order is subject–verb–object is not likely to be confused by the subject–object–verb order of another language, or vice versa.) -- Hoary (talk) 13:38, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Here's a couple of pages for Japanese speakers (in Japanese)[1] [2] and one for Koreans (in Korean) [3] Siuenti (talk) 18:53, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

• If we are just looking at Russian, Arabic and Chinese, any speaker of one would have a hard time learning the other; none has a proven genetic relation to another, and all have quite different scripts. But Russian and Arabic share alphabetic type writing systems, polysyllabic roots, inflection, and lack distinctive tone, which it is hard to pick up as an adult. Chinese would be the most distant outlier. Observations like this can't be made without a lot of study of comparative linguistics and familiarity with the languages involved.

μηδείς (talk) 02:37, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

But Russian and Arabic share alphabetic type writing systems, polysyllabic roots, inflection, ... -- I don't agree on any of these three points. Russian script includes the vowels, so you can read aloud a word even if it doesn't make any sense to you. Arabic script doesn't include the vowels, so you have to know the word to be able to read it aloud -- which is kind of similar to the use of Chinese script. Arabic roots aren't "polysyllabic" -- the consonants are part of the root, and the inserted vowels make up the "inflection". This transfix-based inflection is entirely unnatural to a Russian (or, for that matter, any Indo-European) speaker, who is only used to continuous affixes, attached to a continuous root. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 09:50, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

You are making an irrelevant objection, 212, perhaps based on my use of the word root. But "to read" has forms that indicate person and number as well as gender and perfect versus imperfect aspect in both Russian and Arabic, each in their own ways, and each involving differences in prefixes, suffixes, and vowel "ablaut" in a wide sense. The forms are quite distinct, but the notions of conjugations are entirely alien to Chinese.

You also entirely gloss over the fact that I said Russian and Arabic have alphabetic type writing systems, not alphabets, although Arabic is perfectly capable of expressing vowel sounds by various means such as matres lectionis. I am curious if you are familiar with the declination of the word "tongue" язык in Russian, and would like to opine on whether the nominal yuhZICK and prepositional ihzickYEH singular case forms would be easier for an Arabic or a Chinese speaker to grok?

μηδείς (talk) 03:39, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

My objection was not so much based on your use of the word root as it was about your use of the word polysyllabic to refer to a root which doesn't include any syllables altogether.

Arabic is as capable of expressing vowel sounds as Chinese is capable of using an alphabetical writing, such as pinyin or bopomofo: it's possible, but outside of certain contexts, it isn't normally done.

As for wikt:язык, its nominative form is pronounced "ih-zick", with exactly the same initial syllable as in the prepositional case. Wiktionary has both the IPA and an audio recording; I have no clue where you pulled your "yuh-zick" out of. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 12:12, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

You understood my point about alphabet-like, and are just being contrary; and you have no native understanding of Russian vowel stress and its effects on reduction. You conveniently ignore the fact that the standard nominative form of jazyk has an initial yod, while this disappears in forms with a stressed desinence. I am not interested in debating you. My points are clear. μηδείς (talk) 20:21, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

RD is not a place to look for debates, it's a place to look for references. I'd appreciate if you can find a reference confirming that standard nominative form of jazyk has an initial yod, while this disappears in forms with a stressed desinence, which we could then mention in Vowel reduction in Russian. I don't know what you mean by "native understanding of Russian vowel stress and its effects on reduction", but Russian is my first language, and neither my own experience nor any sources available to me confirm your statement. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 07:35, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Tagalog is considered harder than Malay because Tagalog has a much more complex grammar. Tagalog has prefixes, infixes, and suffixes, and the verbs are conjugated. Tagalog also uses grammatical particles that indicate how other words are used, just like Japanese does. Malay does not have particles, does not conjugate its verbs, and it seems very straightforward to an English-speaker. Malay is also easier for a Chinese person, for the same reasons. —Stephen (talk) 10:28, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

"floating point data types" or "floating-point data types"?

Should it be "floating point data types" or "floating-point data types"? Context

Similar for "floating point type" vs. "floating-point type", "floating point numbers" vs. "floating-point numbers", "floating point representations" vs. "floating-point representations", "floating point operations" vs. "floating-point operations", etc.

Searching on Wikipedia by a search engine (restricted to en.wikipedia.org) gave examples of both forms (e.g. Data type and Real data type - though not 100% in the same context).

--Mortense (talk) 19:41, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

You've seen it both ways because usage varies. Some people feel that expressions of two or more words that form a compound adjective should automatically be hyphenated if it's used before a noun, as it says here, and therefore "floating-point" is required in these examples. Others feel that there is no need for such a strong general rule, and say things like "hyphenate only if the reader will be confused otherwise". See here, for example. The Chicago Manual of Style contains a long list of different situations but the general rule (on page 4 of the PDF) says to hyphenate in this case. --69.159.60.210 (talk) 20:31, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

• Early on, I usually used the hyphen when editing Wikipedia. The hyphens were generally removed by other editors. I can take a hint: I quit using them. My uneducated guess is that they are old-fashioned. -Arch dude (talk) 02:24, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

You are probably correct that no computer programmer would think that the data types were floating, but Wikipedia is aimed at a general readership. Personally, I prefer to be old-fashioned if it improves clarity, even marginally (though I'd prefer not to be both old and fashioned). Dbfirs 20:50, 1 January 2017 (UTC)