Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 October 11

Humanities Science Mathematics Computing/IT Language Miscellaneous Archives

The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions at one of the pages linked to above.

Titles Of All Articles

Aren't the first letter of every word in a title supposed to be capitalized? So why aren't the first letters of all the words in Wikipedia articles capitalized? That would mean the section headings too. And then there's the template that says, i.e.: iPod, the first letter of the article is specifically supposed to be uncapitalized. It teaches the reader how to write iPod, but then none of the articles have a lineatthetop to say [something like] how you're supposed to capitalize the word, when you should, when you shouldn't, i.e.: if it is the first word of a sentence of in a title, or if it compounded into a name, and never in all other circumstances. What's the deal?100110100 07:44, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

With matters such as capitalization of titles, there is no strict grammatical rule about it, it is up to the writer or editor to apply the rule they prefer consistently. See the article on Capitalization for examples. Wikipedia articles do not generally capitalize words other than proper nouns in titles because user consensus has decided on this as the preferred standard for this project (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)). --Canley 15:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, but it sounds like a grievance you should take to the talk page of the Wikipedia policy on article titles, not a question about language... AnonMoos 15:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Delighting you Always or Always Delighting You?

Can anybody help to comments on this? I think both phrases mean differently but some people thinks the proper way of saying should be the latter one --> 'Always Delighting You' and 'Delighting You Always' is not a proper English 203.127.235.92 08:14, 11 October 2006 (UTC)RK

Neither of them is a standard English expression, in my experience. What's the context in which you would use them? JackofOz 09:26, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

The former is apparently a motto of Canon. --Ptcamn 11:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

'Delighting You Always' isn't particularly natural-sounding; it's not something anyone would say in everyday conversation. However, it is valid as a sort of archaic expression, like you might put in a letter ("thinking of you always"). Certainly both are "proper English". --Ptcamn 11:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Whether grammatically proper or not, wouldn't this be a strange thing for someone to say about themself? "Always Delighting in You", or "You're Delighting me Always", OK, but here the author seems to be boasting: "I am delightful".  --Lambiam^Talk 11:38, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

"It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delectable, it's delirious, it's dilemma, it's de-limit,it's deluxe, it's de-lovely." from "It's De-lovely" by Eddy Duchin.Edison 14:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Cole Porter, actually. JackofOz 20:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Written by Cole Porter, covered by Duchin, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Mathis and a lotta other people, apparently. -- the GREAT Gavini 16:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Translations

Can you help me find translations of the word MAGIC? It can be in any language that still uses the english letter(ex:a,b,c,d,e,f,g). If not the word MAGIC, then ENCHANTMENT or SPELLS? I need a 2-3 syllable word that can mean any of these. Please help me!!!!! -help needed

Ermm...well, German would be (die) Zauberei, (eine) Bezauberung and (die) Zaubersprüche respectively. -- the GREAT Gavini 16:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

...and French would be something like (la) sorcellerie, (un) enchantement and (des) formules magiques respectively. -- the GREAT Gavini 16:45, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

...not forgetting Spanish, which would be something like (la) magia for "magic" and (los) conjuros for "spells". -- the GREAT Gavini 16:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

...and Russian (transliterated), would be mágiya (magic), zagovór (spells), and ocharovániye (enchantment). the accents mark stress.

But now that we've had our fun, go to wiktionary and look up the words. They've usually got a good number of translations there. Ƶ§œš¹ ^{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:01, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, had forgotten about ol' Wiktionary. For "magic", Chinese is 魔术, Dutch is toverkunst, etc. etc. -- the GREAT Gavini 19:53, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

One Swedish word is "trolldom", possibly related to trolls, (the other is magi)... ;) And if you care about that stuff, German "zauber*" is cognate to Dutch "tover*", after the High German consonant shift affected the consonant sounds. 惑乱 分からん

For the roots in Latin, Greek, etc see the Online Etymology Dictionary at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=magic&searchmode=none .

혜낫데

Just a quickie. What is the Romanization of Hangul 혜낫데 ? Hyenaste ^(tell) 20:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Korean syllables can't have /s/ at the end, so the Romanization would be Hyenatde. An alternative would be 혜나스데, Hyenaseude, with an epenthetic vowel. --Kjoonlee 02:01, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm very close for one day's study! I don't like the epenthesis though... I'd prefer to change the /d/ to /s/: 혜나쎄. That would be "hyenasse" right? Where would the stress be in this word? Hyenaste ^(tell) 02:45, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Korean doesn't really have stress or pitch at the word-level. All syllables have about-the-same stress. --Kjoonlee 04:18, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Correction: Standard South Korean doesn't, but some dialects (such as the Gyeongsang dialect) do have pitch at the word-level. --Kjoonlee 00:20, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

As long as no weird pitch will creep in, I'm content. Is 혜나쎄 a satisfactory word? I wouldn't want to be offending anyone or embarrassing myself with it. Hyenaste ^(tell) 00:33, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

It sounds sort of like 혜나 세, "Hyena (a possible girl's name) is strong", but it isn't offending offensive or embarrassing in the least. :) --Kjoonlee 01:33, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Ooh nice! girl's name besides -_- To make another tangent, what is the translation of hyena? Wiktionary doesn't say, ko.wikipedia.org doesn't seem to have an article, and Babelfish's doesn't look right. Hyenaste ^(tell) 01:50, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Yikes, I had no idea hyena was spelt like that in English. o_O The animal is called 하이에나, haiena in Korea. --Kjoonlee 02:03, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Does 하이에나 세 mean "Hyena is strong", then? Hyenaste ^(tell) 21:29, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Syllable endings

If syllables cannot end in ㅅ, then is 낫 a real word, or just a possible block, given for the purpose of completeness? Babelfish translates 낫 as sickle. But it cannot be nas, can it? Hyenaste ^(tell) 00:33, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

My mistake. I should have said syllables can't end in [s] (note how I used brackets instead of slashes). <낫> is pronounced as [낟]. The relevant articles are phoneme and allophone. --Kjoonlee 01:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh ok thanks! That makes much more sense. (But no /st/ in Korean!? How do you manage!) Hyenaste ^(tell) 01:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• <낫> is how it's written.
• /nas/ is the phonemic representation of the morpheme.
• [nat] is the actual pronunciation when there's no vowel following.
• [naɕi] is the actual pronunciation when the /i/ vowel follows. --Kjoonlee 01:41, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

SWANS

If a group of geese are called a gaggle and crows are a murder, what are swans called? (unsigned comment)

See Collective_nouns_for_birds.--Sonjaaa 22:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I would like to encourage the (would be) cygnetory to sign with 4 tildes (~). StuRat 17:07, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Arrrrgh...that's terrible Stu! -- the GREAT Gavini 19:02, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

So bad that you want that to be my last pun in Wikipedia ? Wouldn't that make this my swan song ? :-) StuRat 23:13, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Harper and harpist?

At what point in time did the word harpist become the dominant word, rather than the older term harper? What is the timeline or border that demarcates the two terms in time?--Sonjaaa 21:17, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's to do with a point in time: I think it's to do with a change in meaning, or at least connotation. To me 'harper' suggests a traditional musician with a portable harp, quite likely singing or accompanying song, whose performance is probably part of other social or ceremonial activities. A 'harpist' will be playing a harp (portable or not) in a specifically musical context - a concert or a recital. The first word became rare because what it described became rare. --ColinFine 00:04, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

If you want a date, the OED lists occurrences of the word harper from 800 to the present day, and harpist from 1613 to the present. Lesgles (talk) 22:11, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Trumpeter?

What do you call someone who plays the trumpet? (drum=drummer) (unsigned comment)

Yup, trumpeter is a word.--Sonjaaa 22:36, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Or "trumpet player". — QuantumEleven 13:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I wonder how I got "trumpeteer" into my head. --Kjoonlee 03:10, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I had it in my head too and looked it up to see it didn't exist. I think we were influenced by words like puppeteer.--Sonjaaa 21:22, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Ooh, that makes three of us. Hyenaste ^(tell) 21:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)