Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 February 12

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February 12

What is Jing-Jin-Ji?

If the idea is to form a megacity, it couldn't possibly be an area of 110 million which would include all of Hebei as reported widely by media. Our article includes the cities of Zhangjiakou and Cangzhou which would be 3 hours apart if just connecting between high speed rail stations so it seems like too large of an area. Is there any official indication of what is the practical Jing-Jin-Ji area? Muzzleflash (talk) 12:32, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

We have an article that starts "China National Highway 112 is a 1228 km ring road". These are clearly not your grandfather's cities. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:35, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

It looks to be just a term to refer to the large urban conglomeration, and not an administrative unit per se. For analogues in other countries, see Northeast megalopolis in the U.S. and Rhine-Ruhr in Germany. --Jayron32 15:38, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

I measure almost the same maximum width for the Northeast Megalopolis and Jingjinji of about 500 miles (from one end of Hebei to the other and from so far up the Maine line it almost stops being squiggly to the Richmond side of Spotsylvania County, Virgina. These are what's shown in the maps in the Boston and DC metro area articles). So no new ground broken there. Of course the population's upped to Chinese levels so 110 million (i.e. ~population of Japan) instead of 55 million. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:04, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

China, in general, wins any population contest... --Jayron32 16:11, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Cat Breeds and final consonant elision

Is there any definitive way to tell the breed of a domestic cat? 198.252.245.194 (talk) 20:58, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Have you checked List of cat breeds? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:28, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

I have, but it does not discuss any specific identification guidelines, besides coat, which can be shared by several breeds. Is there any more definitive process? 198.252.245.194 (talk) 15:50, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

• See show cat. Just as with dogs and horses, there is the question of documented parentage and confirmation to a physical standard. μηδείς (talk) 16:34, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Most cats (American Polydactls excepted) have a policy of neither confirming nor denying their association with a particular breed. It's called "pussyfooting". When it comes to questionable obedience and reproduction, judges only look for conformation. Maybe I'm nitpicking or unfairly criticizing your minor error, but that's the nature of the beast. A full-blooded, well-documented Persian can be recognized as such, but if the judges see a single nit, it stands as much of a chance at winning a ribbon as this scum of the earth. A fine line indeed. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:52, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Look to the beam in thine own eye first, Hulk. I said documented parentage and conformation to a physical standard. That I meant conformation is obvious. That you failed to comprehend that and doesn't mean "either" is a bit more worrying. μηδείς (talk) 06:39, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

That use of "thine" for the possessive adjective sent me to the 27-volume Oxford English Dictionary for examples. It's right - cf "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord". 86.2.21.152 (talk) 11:44, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

You had to look up thine??? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:28, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Most people nowadays are not aware that mine and thine are the older original forms of my and thy properly still used before vowels, just as "an" vs. "a" before a word beginning in a vowel. The word "an" derives frome one and the loss of enn before a consonant in these forms is an innovation within English.

I also hear people use thee as if it were a subject pronoun and thy before a vowel all the time, and it makes me cringe. I love Oliver Stone's Nixon, but Mary Steenburgen's affected Quaker usage of "thee" with a third person verb in all cases makes me want to reach for a machete. μηδείς (talk) 21:16, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Thy aggravation runneth over. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:37, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Maybe they don't teach that in the British school system anymore. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:20, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

It tends to turn up in the KJV. In addition to your example earlier, there is "For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory, etc." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:24, 14 February 2018 (UTC)1

The German cognates "meine" and "deine" are still in use. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:35, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

This particular usage of thine is a direct reference to the KJV version of Matthew 7:3-5. TheMrP (talk) 01:58, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Matthew 7:5 μηδείς (talk) 05:11, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Let the record show I understand and appreciate "and". Some of my dearest friends say "and". I'm the least andtagonistic person you know. It's the ampersands that seem strange and weird to me. My only gripe with Medeis' typo was that it created a whole other word. "Confermation", I know what you mean. "Confarmation", absolutely. But "confirmation" might mean what we all think it might, and that's never good (for a cat). InedibleHulk (talk) 22:07, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

My point was that the OP asked about definite verification of a breed. The word breed has breeding implied in it. So conformation alone would not make a St Bernard x German Pinscher hybrid into a Rottweiler, even if it conformed perfectly with the breed standard. Likewise, if one is talking about breeding clubs, sports are not going to be "counted" as members of their breed, whatever their pedigree. So both pedigree and conformation matter. That's the relevant answer to the OP, the rest is irrelevant, and I am not sure I want to have any further discussion of misspellings. μηδείς (talk) 02:09, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

I think I see where you're coming from now. A purebred cat does need conformation and pedigree. When I said the judge only looks at conformation, I meant as opposed to that and confirmation. They're Siamese if they please, and Siamese if they don't please. If you hadn't made the typo, the OP wouldn't have gotten the Wikilink, so it all worked out in the end. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:57, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

See Matthew 7 (and no doubt many other places) for the correct use of "thine" and "thy". Basically, "my" and "thy" are possessive adjectives and "mine" and "thine" function as either the subject or complement of the verb "to be". My particular bugbear is people who use constructions like "thou goeth". 86.169.57.217 (talk) 15:09, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

• @InedibleHulk: I should have linked to cat registry which I did not find on my first search. I got another result when I looked up cat breeding and that was a redirect to show cat which is an inferior article. μηδείς (talk) 18:27, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

• User 86, you are missing a crucial point. "Mine" is not only a substantive pronoun, it is also a variant of the possessive adjective my. In fact, "mine" was the original form, just as "an" ( a weakened form of one) is the original form of the indefinite article. The terminal en in mine, thine, an was later lost when the following word began in a consonant.

That is the historical development in diachronic linguistics. Since the use of thou has ceased to be productive, and people are unused to its declensions, and since mine as a possessive before nouns has become my universally in standard British- and American-type dialects, all that is left is the form an with the original en. This has led to a synchronic reanalysis, where people think that "a" is the underlying form, an that we are inserting an en to keep it separate from a following vowel. That's reasonable, but historically wrong.

If you know French, a similar process has occured with the final -t of third person verbs. Latin third person singular verbs normally ended in -t, such as the Vulgar Latin illus habet "he has" which became il a in modern French. But in the inverted question form, habet illus? the intervocalic tee was retained. Although the tee has been dropped in the spelling, it is revived in the question form, a-t-il? which follows the rules of elision (French). So, while modern French speakers think they are adding a tee, they are actually retaining the original tee in only a few contexts that encouraged its retention.

See also wikt:ti in French Creole where "ti" (from -t-il) has become entirely grammaticalized into a stand-alone question marking particle. μηδείς (talk) 18:22, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

I was wrong to attribute this to Haitian, it is found in other French creoles. 16:13, 18 February 2018 (UTC)