Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 August 19

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August 19

Tomorrow a group of Japanese exchange students our coming to our high school and our Japanese teacher is setting up a sort of "speed dating" game where we have to ask the students questions like their hobbies and pets and stuff and I was wondering if you guys had any cool questions I could ask them other than the usual? --Candy-Panda 11:24, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you asking for questions in Japanese or will you translate whatever suggestions you receive here yourself? ---Sluzzelin talk 11:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd prefer the former if it's thats okay ^^; I dont really have time to translate myself. --Candy-Panda 12:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Not really an answer, but you might want to look at Japanese blood type theory of personality. --Kjoonlee 18:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I too did this in my Japanese classes. Pets and hobbies tend to be the main topic, you could also ask what city/region they are from (go-shusshin), and bring up the weather (using yori to compare relative warmness etc etc). Also, you could try asking if they have a part time job (arubaito). Beyond that - just wing it, I guess. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 10:15, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Word for the skin that sloughs off after sunburn

I've forgotten it - a great word, very suggestive, as I recall - it might be a neologism - can't see it in the sunburn article. Can anyone help? Adambrowne666 12:29, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Found blype for a "piece of skin that peels off after a sunburn" ([1]), no idea on notability, but it does appear in Robert Burns's Hallowe'en, though sunburn isn't the cause of exfoliation:

"He taks a swirlie, auld moss-oak

For some black gruesome carlin;

An' loot a winze, an' drew a stroke,

Till skin in blypes cam haurlin

Aff 's nieves that night."

---Sluzzelin talk 16:36, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I also found "AKA'AKA'A", Hawaiian for "Skin peeling or falling off after either sunburn or heavy drinking", from the book The Meaning of Tingo by Adam Jacot de Boinod. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, Sluzzelin - you're a legend - yes, blype is the word! - but love the Hawaiian one - they make such good use of the letter A and apostrophes - I believe A'A is a type of cold lava Adambrowne666 23:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

'a'a. DuncanHill 23:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

So what happened? - the Hawaiians got all the vowels the Eastern European languages lost? Adambrowne666 21:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

-- wait, I just saw 'after heavy drinking'! - wow, does skin come off when you drink too much? Adambrowne666 23:08, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I loved that part and am just as clueless, all I could picture was abrasion due to bumping, stumbling, and skinning one's knees - or barroom fisticuffs. I posted a question at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Science/2007_August_20#Peeling. ---Sluzzelin talk 07:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

... and it got a good reply! ---Sluzzelin talk 20:59, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Fantastic - thanks again, Sluzzelin, and Nil Einne. Adambrowne666 23:54, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

"infandum regina iubes renovare dolorem"

Can anyone give me a sensible translation of this line from Virgil's Aeneid? [I can; basically, I like Kierkegaard's translation best. "It is for you, My Queen, that I reknew unspeakable grief." It is in reference to Dido's exhortations of Aneas to tell the tale of Troy's destruction and is Virgil's nod to the audience that things are about to get dark. But he's also arguing that, for the sake of the idea of Queendom,DVX if a woman commands the truth, the whole truth must be given, no matter how dark and horrid.] It is often quoted out of context.If someone quotes it at you either in speech or writing (as in a card say)what are they trying to say about you? What's the hidden meaning?Drdavideward 12:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Italian Wikipedia actually has a stub about this quote, see it:Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem. More or less literally it means, "Queen, you force me to revisit inexpressible pain", so I imagine if someone says it to you, they're saying "I don't wanna talk about it" in an extremely high-falutin way. —Angr 13:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Angr is right. Aeneas says this to Dido when she insists that he talk about the Trojan War, where he saw so many of his men perish.--El aprendelenguas 01:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

14th century english

I was reading a book called, "A Distant Mirror" where the author talks about Europe during the 14th century. Occasionly she uses english during their time peiod, which for the most part, I can translate but this one baffled me. I tried looking it up on Google and Wiki with no results. The word is wighte. It was part of an epitaph that went ... All the witte of this worlde, Can nought conforem a pees bytwene the pope and his enymys; Ne bitwene two Cristene kynges, can no wighte pees make, Profitable to ayther people. I hope this helps. Any help would be fantastic. Thank you. –—…°≈≠≤≥±−×÷←→·§ QuetzelquoatlQuetzelquoatl 18:50, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Per the American Heritage Dictionary it means "a living being, a creature". What the dictionary doesn't mention is that it was particularly common as a negative polarity item, as in the quote you gave. —Angr 18:57, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

That's right - we have the article Wight "..can no (wight) peace make".87.102.9.208 19:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

How are (were) newly-encountered languages translated?

Picture the first Portuguese explorers landing in Japan in the 16th century. "Olá!" say the explorers. "Konnichi wa!" say the locals. Considering that for both sides the other language is totally alien, how does the process of translation happen? I realise some things can be got through context (i.e. in the above exchange, you can guess that both phrases are greetings, and you can work out nouns by context too), but how are complex, abstract concepts such as grammar explained when both sides lack the communication tools to explain them? It seems like a Catch-22. Is there a name for the process of translating a previously unencountered language? Sum0 23:26, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I know several people who have lived in foreign countries and have picked up the language spoken there without any former instruction. I imagine the same process (i.e. immersion) would have needed to occur back in the Age of Exploration.--El aprendelenguas 01:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Also, they had the benefit of Chinese translators. --Duomillia 01:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

You start with hand gestures and pointing. Then you start "teaching" by pointing at a ship and saying "ship," or whatever. Not that there aren't misunderstandings. "Kah-nah-tah" meant "village" in the aboriginal language of the lower St. Lawrence, but the settlers interpreted it to mean the entire country, "Canada." -- Mwalcoff 02:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe that complex concepts just take more interactions to be learned. When you point to a ship and say "ship" one day, and the other day you point to a ship and you say "ship", that is enough to learn the new word, because it's visually so clear what comprises the ship.

Now, when you want to teach the word "above", which is a more abstract concept, it's not enough to point twice to a blue ball on top of a desk and say "above", since this could mean either "desk" or "ball" or even "blue". You must point many times to many different things above one another, and only after some time the concept will be properly learned. An alternative to pointing to many objects above one another is to take the ball in your hands, and put it below the desk, and say "below", then put it above the desk and say "above" again, so the learner will understand what makes one concept different than the other.

In any case, the more complex a concept is, the more comparisons you will need with other concepts to learn it. If you want to explain the word Justice (an example of abstract concept from our article abstract object), then you will need to teach many other different words before to the learner, so the learner will be able to understand what is the difference between Justice and unjustice. You cannot point to, say, a boy paying back what he has stolen, and say "Justice!" because this could mean "to pay", "boy", "to pay back", or a lot of simpler things. If the learner knows already what "boy" means, and what "to pay" means, and what "to steal" means, then you will be able to tell stories that will put together many concepts and make it clear how the word Justice represents a complex concept that is different from "paying" and different from "boy paying", and different from "boy paying back what he has stolen" for instance.

Justice actually means (according to one definition of our article on Justice) "the proper distribution of good things", in this case, the money that belongs to whoever it had been stolen from. So, to teach the word Justice, you need to "point" to many situations in which there are "proper distributions of good things", until the person learning the word realizes that the thing that all those situations "pointed" have in common is that good things are being properly distributed, just as they have learned before that the thing common to all two situations in which the teacher pointed to a ship is that this huge and distinguished floating object was in front of you. A.Z. 04:24, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I have to think there's a basic flaw in the question. The same logic could be applied to a child learning their first language, with the inescapable conclusion that nobody has ever learned to speak. When you don't know a language, but you're stuck among people who know nothing else, you do the same things you've always done. You start by learning words for tangible things, then for actions, then basic grammar. Once you have all that, you have a foundation to build on. You can describe, as AZ said, new things in terms of old. What do you, as an adult fluent in English, do when you hear a word you don't recognize? You ask someone to describe it in terms of things you do recognize, and that gives you enough information that you can understand and use it. Or, you learn it from context - I don't think I've ever heard a satisfying definition of irony, but I know what it is. I know what it is because I've seen enough examples of things described as "irony" that I can feel the pattern. If somebody had pointed to "irony" on my first day learning English, I wouldn't have been able to spot the pattern, but since then I've gotten enough context that I can pull the essentials out. A firetruck catching fire, for instance, is an example of irony. "Rai-ai-ain on your wedding day," on the other hand, is not. See the pattern? It's the same process when you have to communicate a previously unnamed concept to someone. You have to either describe it in terms of previously named concepts, or point to enough examples (preferably with verbal descriptions making the examples more specific) that the pattern is clear. Black Carrot 16:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

On your last question - I don't know of such a word, but I'd bet it exists. Black Carrot 16:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Translation from Polish

Does anyone know polish and translate this little bit of text on this website for me? Thanks a lot! The 3 pieces from the website are the 3 words on top, and the picture caption:

1. Granówko
2. powiat kościański
3. własność Rodryga hrabiego Dunina. - Majętność ta, dawniejsza siedziba Nieżychowskich, od roku 1898 znajduje się w rękach obecnego właściciela. - Dwór, wygodny i przestworny, zbudowany został w pierwszej połowie zeszłego wieku przez ówczesnego właściciela Nepomucena Nieżychowskiego.

thanks, --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 23:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Granówko, Kościan County. Count Rodryg Dunin's estate. Formerly the seat of the Nieżychowski family, since 1898 in the hands of the current owner. The mansion, comfortable and spacious, was built in the first half of the previous century by Nepomucen Nieżychowski, the estate's owner at the time. — Kpalion^(talk) 14:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot!! :d --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 14:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)