Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 January 1

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January 1

How do you say "Happy New Year!" in your ancestral or second tongue(s)?

Szczastliwy nowy rok! μηδείς (talk) 05:14, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Proscht Neijohr, e Brezel wie e Scheierdohr, e Kuuche wie e Oweblatt, do werr mer all mitnanner satt. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 05:43, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Nizhónígo Nináánááhai Dooleeł. —Stephen (talk) 08:15, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Esengo na mbula na sika. Wymspen (talk) 13:00, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

No ancestral input, but here are a few dozen [1]. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 17:03, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, @Pp.paul.4:, @Stephen G. Brown:, and @Wymspen:. I'm going to guess, without research, that we've got a southern German dialect, Dine bizaad, and Swahili. Good link, Carbon Caryatid. Mine is the Rusyn language written in Polish orthography. It's very close to the Slovak, and mutually intelligible with the Polish, although the Poles don't use the nominative/accusative, but an oblique case. μηδείς (talk) 00:50, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Not a bad guess. Actually Lingala - main lingua franca along most of the River Congo. SWahili is Heri Za Mwaka Mpya Wymspen (talk) 09:38, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Честита Нова година!

The adjective честит, meaning "happy", is nowadays not usually used except in set phrases when you wish someone a happy holiday or congratulate them on something got or achieved. For the general meaning of "happy", the word щастлив is most common. --Theurgist (talk) 14:29, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Hallich Nei Yaahr! (I think. I can no longer speak or understand much Pennsylvania Dutch. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:26, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

The standard Russian expression is "С новом годом", usually followed by "с новом счастьем" (literally, "With the new year, with new happiness"). The verb "Поздравляю" (I congratulate you, I wish you) can precede this, but it's usually omitted as understood, and that (unspoken) word governs the use of the preposition c, which in turn requires the instrumental case. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:55, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Dictionaries and lists like those linked above will invariably tell you the Polish equivalent is Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku, but few people actually say this. Wszystkiego dobrego w Nowym Roku (literally, "[I wish you] all [that is] good in the New Year") is more common. — Kpalion^(talk) 17:40, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

• In Esperanto I'd say Bonan novan jaron, but the table cited by Caryatid gives Bonan Novjaron. (The phrases are in accusative case, as objects of an implied verb such as "I wish you" or "May you enjoy".) There's a clear difference of sense: do you wish your friend a good year (French: Bonne année!) or a good first of January? In which languages is the latter customary? —Tamfang (talk) 22:41, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Traffic police baton

What is the common English name for this type of striped baton, used by traffic police and road patrols to stop cars? Thanks--93.174.25.12 (talk) 22:21, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

UK police don't use anything like that, so there isn't a name for it in this country. I would just call it a striped police baton, or perhaps a traffic control baton - but those are descriptions, not names. In this article - Baton (law enforcement) - it is just called a traffic baton. In Russia, where they actually use the striped ones, it is called a трафика эстафету (trafika estafetu) which translates as traffic baton. Wymspen (talk) 11:25, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the Russian: First, the construction would be эстафета трафика in the base form: эстафета is nominative while эстафету is accusative, and трафика is the genitive of трафик. Second, that would mean "traffic's baton" or "baton of the traffic" and wouldn't make much sense, and Googling that or keywords like {эстафета трафик} doesn't produce much meaningful stuff, while some more Googling reveals that "палка регулировщика" or "жезл регулировщика" ("traffic officer's baton") might be used as terms for the object. For simplicity I'm using "baton" as a translation for all эстафета, палка and жезл. My Russian is rusty though, and perhaps User:Любослов Езыкин will be able to shed some more light on the issue. --Theurgist (talk) 15:41, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Theurgist: I was just typing the answer when you pinged. Yes, Google Translate has made no sense here. I wonder why people give their answers pretending they know the language while they actually use GT. It would always take very little time for a native speaker to see the mistake. GT is a hardly useful and reliable tool for providing an expert answer. Better to wait for a person who actually knows the language than to put yourself in a ridiculous situation. In fact, GT here just put the translation for "traffic" into the genitive case as the word comes first, then translated the second word using an absolutely unrelated meaning, that is a baton for a relay race, in addition putting it into the dative case. The final result is a joke.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:02, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Not really the same, but there's the rather more benign British Lollipop Lady (or Man). Alansplodge (talk) 13:26, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Wymspen: The thing is officially called (according to the GOST "Р 51567-2000") жезл регулировщика, that is literally "traffic-controller's baton". Colloquially it may be called as a militiaman's (or now policeman's) baton/stick/club (Russian жезл/палка/дубинка). Next time do not rely on Google Translate while you provide an answer, especially if you do not know the language at all, as your Russian "translation" sounds absolutely ridiculous.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:43, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

The Russian came directly from a Russian language website - eg https://ru.pinterest.com/pin/291819250827621095/ - and I only checked the translation into English. Wymspen (talk) 10:22, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Wymspen: Pinterest is hardly a Russian website. Actually, the link you provided gives a page from a Chinese trade site which obviously translates the descriptions of its goods using Google Translate. And by the way, the site lists a red baton which is not used by the Russian police.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:57, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Just as a bit of background: as Wymspen said, UK police do not and never have used such an implement. They also nowadays do not direct traffic (except in an emergency situation such as a road crash), but decades ago when they did at certain large city intersections, they instead wore white gloves or gauntlets to make their arm/hand signals more visible. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.62.241 (talk) 19:12, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Agreed: see this page from a 1950s edition of the UK Highways Code. Alansplodge (talk) 16:23, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

From Russian sources it is known that such striped batons were introduced in the Soviet Union in 1939. I do not know if they borrowed it from somewhere or invented themselves. The Soviet Union had not enough traffic lights so they employed police traffic controllers, especially on busy streets where the manual control of the traffic might be preferable. The Soviet/Russian version of traffic code has had even a special chapter of how to interpret controller's gestures.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 14:28, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps they use such a thing and have a designation for it in some other English-speaking country... Outside anglosphere, in Czech, the formal term is směrovka, which means roughly "direction-thing" (derived from směr: "direction", "heading"). NB the same word směrovka is also used for multiple other things that serve for directional indication or change (arrow sign in trail blazing, aircraft rudder etc.). There is also an informal term among police officers themselves - regulovka, which, as I guess, comes via military slang, that was under heavy Russian influence in 1950s-1980s (the corresponding word for the military/police person who momentarily directs traffic by such means is regulovčík). Czech Road Law contains a section on manual traffic control by a police officer. which calls this kind of baton směrovka and for its holder use more general term policista ("policeman"), i. e. regulovčík doesn't appear there as a legal term, although in less formal context it is fairly common. Anyway, as said above, in reality you encounter them only exceptionally (as this news article in cs: points out - many drivers, upon such an encounter, appear unsure about or completely unfamiliar with meaning of all those gestures). GCZPN3 (talk) 15:52, 3 January 2017 (UTC)