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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 August 21

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August 21

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Why, unexpectedly, is there no obvious religious content in This is the Home of the Brave?

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See also: Talk:This_Is_the_Home_of_the_Brave § Legal_status

Thanks. Apokrif (talk) 06:03, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is if you realize it's a celebration of Pashtunwali, not Islam. You might call it a code, value system or way of life rather than a religion, of course. But it symbolically invokes Wings, the Lion and Blood as well as any cult classic emblem, anthem or epic on Earth, in my opinion. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:58, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but that doesn't explain why this islamist movement did not, at a minimum, mention Allah or Muhmmad. Apokrif (talk) 17:20, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

NATO phonetic alphabet and spellcheckers

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Go to WP:ALFA. It says something that implies that the NATO phonetic alphabet long predated the invention of spellcheckers. This is barely true. The NATO phonetic alphabet was invented in 1955; spellcheckers began in 1961. Thus the interval is only 6 years. Any corrections needed to what the essay is saying?? Georgia guy (talk) 12:12, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What sort of spellchecker existed in 1961? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:08, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See the article Spellchecker. Georgia guy (talk) 13:12, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That 1961 date is kind of misleading. It was at least 10 more years before it became available on commercial computers, and several more years before it became available on IBM mainframes. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:48, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) "The first spell checkers for personal computers appeared in 1980" unless you had a mainframe in your bedroom like this, in which case they were only widely available from the "late 1970s" according to that article.
Note that spelling alphabets originated in the First World War, the phrase "ack ack" refers to the letter "A" from the alphabet used in the Royal Artillery (AA = Anti-Aircraft). It was only in 1955 that the present common international alphabet was finally agreed. Alansplodge (talk) 18:02, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Assuming all the information in this section as well as the essay I linked to, A in the NATO phonetic alphabet was spelled Alfa in all pre-1980 sources, including those of English-only environments. Georgia guy (talk) 18:59, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone used different alphabets before there were efforts to produce a unified code in the Second World War. The RAF used A for Apple for example. Alansplodge (talk) 21:59, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Allied military phonetic spelling alphabets has more details. I see "A-Ack" was introduced in the British Army in 1904. The first US Army code in 1908 used "A-Actor". Alansplodge (talk) 22:05, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:Alansplodge, I'm talking exclusively about the now-common NATO phonetic alphabet. What I mean is that there were no pre-1980 uses of the "Alpha" spelling in the NATO phonetic alphabet. Georgia guy (talk) 23:32, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The essay does not say, and as far as I can see does not suggest, that the NATO phonetic alphabet long predates the invention of spellcheckers. It states that people started to get the spelling of Alfa and Juliett wrong around the time that spellcheckers became widely used, which is not the same as being invented. Moreover, it does not contain any indication of the length of time that elapsed between the introduction of the alfabravo and the emergence of such misspellings. So no corrections are needed.  --Lambiam 09:46, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's always kind of annoyed me that these alphabets are not "phonetic" in any meaningful sense -- they're acrophonic. AnonMoos (talk) 18:29, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Phonic alphabet? Pace Guy Macon's essay, the entries are not meant to be written but to be sounded: /ˈælfə/, /ˈbɹɑvoʊ/, /ˈ(t)ʃɑɹli/, ... . I don't think one can characterize /kɛˈbɛk/ as acrophonic.  --Lambiam 07:51, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it doesn't really matter whether it's spelled Alfa or Alpha - the point is that they sound the same, and the sound stands for the letter "A". And whether "phonetic" is pedantically correct or not, that's what it's called. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:20, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, the term "phonetic alphabet" has a very specific meaning (see "International Phonetic Alphabet" etc), and the Nato stuff does not legitimately fit this definition. It's both the Wikipedia "Common Name" and also a stupid dumb misnomer. And "Quebec" is most certainly acrophonic for the letter Q, since the letter Q almost always stands for the sound [k], and the word "Quebec" begins with this sound [k]. AnonMoos (talk) 02:56, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hence the pronunciation "key-BECK" for the letter "Q". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:43, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
However, the alphabet in question is primarily intended for use by people who will never have encountered the word "acrophonic", but likely already know that "phonetic" has something to do with the sounds of speech. Since there is a significantly higher-than-average incidence of dislexia (and discalculia) in military personnel (my father is a professional tutor of British Army recruits with such problems), the added barrier of using a previously unlearned word in the name would not be helpful. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.121.162.207 (talk) 11:50, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hearing a word like "acrophonic", they might picture trapeze artists. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:05, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Washington post article

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Greetings,

I had saved following URL link of an article appeared in Washington post but now attempts to reach to that link are taking me to just https://www.washingtonpost.com Any ways I can recover that article ?

Thanks

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias are for expanding information and knowledge' (talk) 17:43, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure it's spelled right? What does "becoming a none" mean? <-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 17:46, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
According to Wikt:none#Etymology 2, it's someone who will 'respond "none" when asked about their religion'. Alansplodge (talk) 18:13, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see. If Muslims are looked down upon by the average American, I doubt atheists have it much better. <-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 18:23, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See Apostasy in Islam.  --Lambiam 09:26, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
An article with the same title is here.
If that's not the one, you could try Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request where someone with a Washington Post subscription may be able to help. Alansplodge (talk) 18:13, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With graphics here.  --Lambiam 09:24, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Lambiam, that's the same URL that the OP cited above as redirecting to the WaPo's main page. I have a subscription to the site and can't find the article anywhere there--it seems to have been wiped away for unknown reasons. The text and graphics can, however, be found here. Deor (talk) 17:09, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks to Alansplodge , Lambiam, Deor & Baseball Bugs this one is now resolved - @ archive link found here. (Though below I am coming with one more request) Bookku, 'Encyclopedias are for expanding information and knowledge' (talk) 17:42, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Resolved
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