Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 April 18

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April 18

French Bread?

As the French don't seem too keen on sliced bread, do they have an equivalent phrase for 'the best thing since sliced bread'? 137.138.46.155 07:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Some people actually do say things like la meilleure chose depuis l'invention du pain tranché, but this is of course a jocular direct translation of the American expression. To make it more French, baguettes can be substituted for pain, other snowclones being the invention of le fil à couper le beurre ("the wire for cutting butter") or the apparition of the brioche. I couldn't find any specific French idiom for saying something hyperbolic like Cette invention est une innovation formidable qui ouvre la porte à une nouvelle mode de vivre.  --Lambiam^Talk 08:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

A French would say qui ouvre la porte à un nouvel art de vivre de nouveaux modes de vie.195.33.65.134 08:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

To be sarcastic, a French would say things like la meilleure invention depuis l'invention du fil à couper le beurre or la meilleure invention depuis l'eau tiède. To be admiring one would say la meilleure invention depuis la roue, la meilleure invention depuis Gutenberg or la meilleure invention depuis l'imprimerie.195.33.65.134 08:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

How about "the best thing since the manage et trois ?" StuRat 04:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you mean the 'ménage à trois' which I translate as 'housework for three'137.138.46.155 07:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The meaning of 'ménage' in this phase is 'family'. 'ménage à trois' means 'The wife, the husband and the lover'. 195.33.65.134 08:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, or household I believe, I was kinda joking, as the only time at school you come across ménage is in the housework context. Doesn't sound quite as fun does it! I wonder if threesomes came before or after sliced bread?137.138.46.155 06:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Translating Scientific American into Spanish

I'm a native Spanish speaker, but I'm not sure how that would be said in Spanish, since "científico estadounidense" would be "American scientist". How would it be? PS:That magazine here is known as "Investigación y ciencia" (Science and research). --Taraborn 10:18, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Does it work better if you reverse the order ("Estadounidense cientifico")? In English, "Scientific" modifies "American" and therefore precedes it; in Spanish, the reverse order would be typical. Marco polo 12:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That would be possible, but sounds a little bit... stupid to me, I don't know. What do you understand by "Scientific American"? Does it mean approximately the same "American scientist" and "Scientific American"? Do you picture an American citizen becoming a scientist by reading the magazine? You see, my problem in coming up with a translation is that I think I don't fully understand the subtleties of the magazine's name. --Taraborn 19:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The name "Scientific American" suggests that it is meant to appeal to ... the scientific American, or the American who is interested in science, but not necessarily a scientist. It sounds to me as if the problem is that "científico" means "scientist", particularly when it appears next to a word that can be an adjective applied to individual people, such as "estadounidense". Maybe it would be better to replace "científico" with "de las ciencias" or some such, so that you have "estadounidense de las ciencias" or something along those lines. (edited) Marco polo 19:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

"Scientific American" is hard to translate since it's not normal English. We would normally say, "American interested in science" or something. Perhaps it would be best to leave it untranslated in whatever you are doing, considering how "scientific" and "American" have cognates in Spanish. -- Mwalcoff 22:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Aha, now I get it. Thanks to both. --Taraborn 23:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I always thought that the two words were both adjectives, and there was an implied noun: 'scientific American (magazine). So, 'la (revista) cientfica estadouniense'. Duomillia 01:30, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds nice too. Thanks. --Taraborn 10:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Browse hieroglyphs

Good morning,

on the page about Egypt, there is the name of the country in egyptian, misteriously written as "km.t". How do I trade those letters for regular hieroglyphs? It seems that there's a particular "/hiero" tag on the page. What do I use to interpret that? I've tried Opera 9.20, Firefox 2.0.0.3 and Internet Explorer 6 SP1, unsuccessfully. Is there a particular browser for that?

Thank you in advance for your attention, Henrique

If you browse down to the section Egypt#Etymology, it should display for you the heiroglyphs for km.t. I know that this works in Mozilla 2.0.0.3, and just checked it in Internet Explorer 6.0.2900. -- nae'blis 21:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Chinese language

Is Chinese a single language or a group of languages? Heegoop, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Both designations are tenable, and it really depends on somewhat arbitrary details of when you stop talking about "different varieties of a language" and start calling them "separate languages". The road leading from one to the other is continuous, without clearly identifiable breaking points or other clear criteria. Our article Chinese language says: "Chinese ... can be considered a language or a language family". In ISO 639, Chinese is classified as a "macrolanguage". As our article Language notes: "There is no clear distinction between a language and a dialect [...]. In other words, the distinction may hinge on political considerations as much as on cultural differences, distinctive writing systems, or degree of mutual intelligibility." If you require mutual intelligibility, then Mandarin (linguistics) is also not a single language with dialects – and neither are English, Dutch or Italian, for that matter.  --Lambiam^Talk 21:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

My analogy is to think of languages like colours on a spectrum. If you compare green and orange, they are clearly not the same. But if you compare, say, dark blue with medium dark blue, you can say they are both the 'same': they're both blue, but not the exact same shade of blue. Same with languages. Obvious, compare English and Chinese and they are not the same. But compare the language in Beijing with the languages in a village X kilometers away from Beijing, compare with what they speak in Shanghai or Guangdong and you can see obvious patterns for comparison even though some of the people you talk to speak mutually incomprehensibly. Duomillia 01:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Who said "A language is a dialect with an army and a fleet"? —Tamfang 21:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

A language is a dialect with an army and navy? Nobody knows, but it was Max Weinreich who wrote it down. --Kjoonlee 23:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Bokmal and Nynorsk

Can Bokmal and Nynorsk use some of the same words together? Heegoop, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Bokmål and Nynorsk share some words, sure. An example is mange hus, meaning "many houses" in both, as well as in Danish.  --Lambiam^Talk 03:43, 19 April 2007 (UTC)