Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 November 4

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November 4

what de?

Hi, in my lonely planet phrasebook for mandarin, there is a sentence, "Wo gen ji ge tongshi yi kuai lai de" (我跟几个同事一块来的) (I'm here with some colleagues). What is the meaning of "de" in this sentence? My Chinese students told me it is the same without "de", but they couldn't explain the reason why "de" is there. Can anyone help? IBE (talk) 13:30, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

In this case, "的" (de) is an affirmative. ―Abelmoschus Esculentus 13:37, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Can anyone give me more examples of "de" as an affirmative? Do we have similar things in English? Is it a common thing in languages to have some funny little particle act as this? IBE (talk) 18:29, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Similar things in English? See Eh, commonly used in Canadian English and New Zealand English. I'm not sure about Canadian usage, but in New Zealand it has multiple meanings based on context and pronunciation. When appended to a sentence, it can call for an agree/disagree response, but frequently it is simply meaningless and the statement could as easily be understood by leaving it out. Example "I'll try to get to the party by 11 o'clock, eh." It is often seen written as "Ay" in New Zealand. Akld guy (talk) 21:02, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

我不是故意的 - I did not do it in purpose. ―Abelmoschus Esculentus 23:23, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

But surely that is the past tense: the 是..的 construction, which every textbook I've seen describes as a type of past tense. IBE (talk) 14:35, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

In English you can use things like the tone and length of words to convey meaning and emphasis. E.g. "Yes" has the normal affirmative meaning when said plainly, but when stretched out can be much more tentative, while when said with a rising tone becomes a question. In particular to affirm or emphasise a statement such as the one immediately above, "I did not do it on purpose", you could emphasise the action: "I did not do it on purpose".

Chinese though is a tonal language. You can’t emphasise words like in English as it would change the meaning. The best example of this is Cantonese which has more tones than Putonghua and vowel length also determines meaning. It uses particles and a lot of them, some of which are heavily used in everyday speech: Written Cantonese#Particles.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 16:01, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but I've never come across "de" before purely as a particle, because there are others to choose from, notably "a" (啊). Is "de" really used as a mere particle? IBE (talk) 14:41, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

See also this comment from a Language desk discussion of February last year:

The spelling may be an indicator of the pronunciation. Here's a passage from Ten Pound Pom by Niall Griffiths (Carmarthen, Wales, 2011, ISBN 978-1-905762-14-9): What's it doing here? I ask a passerby and he says: -Don't know, ey? ... But a word about that 'ey'; Aussies tend to put it at the end of every sentence, whether inquisitive or declamatory. It's just a verbal tic, of course, and means less than when affected Brits do it, because they've consciously adopted it, but it's like the ornithological observation that the beauty of a bird's song in Oz is in direct proportion to the blandness of its plumage; the more lovely the song, the drabber the bird that makes it. Pretty-looking birds just squeal and screech. As if they know, somehow, that humans must be pleased and propitiated in some way, if not through the eye, then through the ear. They must make themselves useful, in some way, to humans. What's this got to do with the Australian 'ey'? F*** it, I don't know. I'm rambling, ey?

Yes. In the sentence "我不是故意的", if you replace "的" with "啊", it is still correct. ―Abelmoschus Esculentus 14:34, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Hair: "zombie" racist?

In the movie Hair, there is a song in which one character lists many racist terms for black people. One of them was "zombie." I've heard one person propose the idea that zombie movies are racist fantasies, metaphors for race wars, but I didn't realize that the connection was made so long ago. Is zombie in fact a racist slur? If so how long has it been such? Temerarius (talk) 15:35, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

The most recent academic overview of the link is Roger Luckhurst's Zombies: A Cultural History (reviewed here). He traces the racism to the plantations of Haiti, and the "othering" of the cultural practices of the slaves, e.g. voodoo. --Carbon Caryatid (talk) 16:01, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Read EO for this word's somewhat ambiguous origins.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:25, 5 November 2018 (UTC)