Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 May 31

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May 31

Colons and semicolons

In Swedish, the rule is that a colon should be followed by a capital letter. What is the rule in English? In particular, I think the following feels wrong.

There is no function having simultaneously all the advertised properties: any extended-real function that is equal to zero everywhere but a single point must have total integral zero.

It should be

There is no function having simultaneously all the advertised properties; any extended-real function that is equal to zero everywhere but a single point must have total integral zero.

(It is from Dirac delta function.) But this,

There is no function having simultaneously all the advertised properties: Any extended-real function that is equal to zero everywhere but a single point must have total integral zero.

would seem okay too.

Which (if any) version is correct? YohanN7 (talk) 13:36, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

The second version is correct. The first is wrong as you would not use a full colon in this sentence. The third is wrong as you cannot have a capital letter in the middle of a sentence. --Viennese Waltz 13:39, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Viennese Waltz's last sentence above is not really in accord with American usage. As MOS:COLON says, "Sometimes (more in American than in British usage) the word following a colon is capitalized, if that word effectively begins a new grammatical sentence ..." One American style guide on my shelves has "The first word after a colon should usually be capped when it begins a complete sentence." I'd say that all three versions are acceptable alternatives, with the colon versions emphasizing that the second part of the statement is an elucidation of the first part. Deor (talk) 13:56, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

The first version is correct, per Strunk and White, p. 8: "Join two independent clauses with a colon if the second interprets or amplifies the first." They do not capitalize the first letter following the colon. Also see the examples of proper use of a colon at [1], and the very clear rule: "Writers should always use a colon to emphasize a connection between two independent clauses." Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:22, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

The third version would be wrong in British English. The first seems more appropriate than the second for the reason cited by Sławomir Biały above. Dbfirs 21:09, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

"self " and "bone ", denoted by the same word, in various languages.

Are there languages, other than Hebrew and Aramaic, that have one word for both "self " and "bone "?

In ancient times, it was believed that one's self (i.e. oneself) is one's skeleton, and that's why the word for "bone " means also "self ", in both Aramaic and Hebrew (mainly Post-Biblical Hebrew - influenced by Aramaic, but also in the common Biblical phrase "on that day itself " - meaning "on that very day "). I wonder if there are other languages having that property. 185.46.77.53 (talk) 20:39, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

(Not what you are looking for, but in Chinese the oracle script version of "self" (自) also meant "nose". The theory is that one pointed to one's nose when indicating oneself. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:52, 31 May 2017 (UTC))

Not quite answering the question but very closely related. In the Māori language of the Māori people of New Zealand, the word iwi means both tribe and bone. Thus the members of a tribe refer to themselves as members of the same iwi (bone). The concept was the basis for the name of the 1984 Booker Prize-winning novel The Bone People. Note: The Māori language is not some obscure language but is a living language spoken daily. The word iwi has virtually been adopted into New Zealand English and is used or encountered frequently by New Zealanders in the media. Akld guy (talk) 22:28, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Akld guy just a BTW question: Is my impression correct that non-Maori New Zealanders are increasingly speaking Maori as a second language, to the extent that young Kiwis are mostly bilingual? (There is a specific term for non-Maori NZers but I just can't recall it now.) Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:23, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Pākehā Wymspen (talk) 08:24, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Wymspen got the term. OR here, but I'm pretty sure that there's no trend towards bilingualism with Maori becoming a second language among youngsters. The Maori language article says only about 4 percent of the NZ population could hold a conversation in Maori about everyday things. Some Maori words have come into use by non-Maori New Zealanders, and tourists would do well to be aware that they will sometimes hear them. Akld guy (talk) 10:42, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Akld guy, non-Māori learning te reo Māori to any real extent is still very rare, even among the young, that's why you get articles like this [2] [3]. (And while there have been some changes, you will probably notice similarities with this from 1973 [4].)

Actually, I'm fairly sure people with no significant Māori heritage are more likely to learn some other language although the numbers are still very poor [5]. While I couldn't find definite statistics, the census strongly indicates this is the case. In 2013 "125,352 Māori (21.3 percent) could hold a conversation about a lot of everyday things in te reo Māori" [6] [7]. Per [8] [9] 148,395 people could speak Māori (I'm fairly sure this is the same definition since it's what the census question asks). So about 23k people who did not identify as Māori who could speak it.

Meanwhile, 49,125 people could speak French. Some of these would be recent immigrants or people who otherwise learnt French elsewhere, and as per the earlier sources, a small number is likely to be Māori, still it's not hard to imagine that when combined with other languages there are over 23k non Māori who learnt a second language other than Māori. More people could speak Northern Chinese (including Mandarin), Hindi and Samoan although it's likely a greater percentage of these are people who learnt it elsewhere and particularly with Samoan it's likely a fair few of them learnt it at home etc in New Zealand because of Samoan heritage.

Note that per the last source 737,910 people (18.6 percent) in 2013 were multilingual (including bilingual) and only 39.6% or ~ 292212 were born here. This means that we're worse off than Australia Languages of Australia [10] and the UK [11].

P.S. BTW, I didn't use Pākehā because the definition varies. While in some cases it includes all non-Māori, in other cases (actually I would say more commonly) it's used to refer only to those of European descent. So it's problematic here as quite a few non-Māori who speak more than one language are not of European descent or only partially (i.e. one of the reasons they speak another language could be because of the other part).

Nil Einne (talk) 23:40, 1 June 2017 (UTC)