Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 August 5

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August 5

Could you please translate this letter?

I've typed in a letter to <email address removed>. I've typed down this message so I could email <email address removed>. He is the letter

Hello. Please don't take this e-mail as a confusing message because the title is in English and the message is in Japanese, unless you have a translator to describe the English title. I use a technique to translate English to Japanese so you can understand this e-mail.

I am a fan of the awesome manga Naruto from the United States. As a proud Naruto fan myself, I totally dig the characters. They are awesome, and so is Masashi Kishimoto, who created the manga. He simply became a great manga artist from Okayama Prefecture who made a great series. I just sent this e-mail to you guys to tell you of how much I like the Naruto series.

I need this letter to be translated to Japanese so they can understand the message. Could someone please translate this letter?

I think it's sweet that you want to write a fan letter like this, and even sweeter that you're taking the trouble to try and get it translated into Japanese. But don't worry too much if you can't get it translated. I would just send it anyway - there'll almost certainly be someone at the company who understands English. Don't hold your breath expecting a reply, though. One small point about your letter - the first sentence could be changed to read "I am a fan from the United States of..." or "I am an American fan of...". The way it's written at the moment makes it sound like the manga itself comes from the United States. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 07:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Language, personal description

What is the name or description of someone that refuses to take responsibility for individual circumstance or actions?--69.146.225.212 07:53, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Apathy?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:09, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

George Bush? Bielle 02:28, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Politician in general? —Tamfang 17:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Buck-passer? Your boss? Clarityfiend 02:57, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Irresponsible? A.Z. 03:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I want to play. Determinist (Social, Genetic or Calvinist)? Frivolous litigant? I'm avowedly irresponsible but I take full responsibility for the effects of my irresponsibility. 38.112.225.84 05:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

shirker? malingerer? casuist? --TotoBaggins 15:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Fatalist? The Jade Knight 03:50, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Psychopath or sociopath? Bielle 17:25, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Greek letters for leet

Hi, there is a form of leet that uses Greek letters to write English words, for example "τηε" for "the", I searched around and can only find Greeklish, but I don't think that is the name of this leet style. Anyone got a clue what it's called and perhaps its rules? Thanks! --Taktser 10:44, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the output of the old Symbol font. Look at this table in particular. I don't think this has a name, but it was effectively a pre-Unicode font that (ab)used ASCII character values by giving them Greek glyphs. Mike Dillon 15:52, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Curious: on my screen (Firefox on MacOS) the Symbol column shows the Greek letters and some of the logical operators correctly, but the other characters are all wrong. —Tamfang 17:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

There's an article on Symbol font... AnonMoos 08:44, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Faux Cyrillic, in regards to Russian used in the way you mentioned. ALTON .ıl 21:17, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

French expression

Can somebody please supply a colloquial French expression equivalent to "narrow minded bastard" ?86.200.6.236 16:23, 5 August 2007 (UTC)DT

"Bigot" [1] is close, but not so strong.SaundersW 16:49, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

You can use the invective bâtard in French, but salopard or salaud are more colloquial. Borné (literally "limited") is the usual term to denote the same concept as "narrow-minded". Together, you could use salaud borné for a man, and salaud bornée for a woman, or, if you want to be fully grammatical (salud and salopard are masculine nouns), salope bornée (salope = "slut"). These terms are insulting and their use may be considered offensive.  --Lambiam 17:02, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

My Bad . . . ?

I am going to sound cranky, and likely also old, but what does "my bad" mean, and where does it come from? It seems to substitute for something like "my mistake", except that "bad" is an adjective (modifier, whatever) and not a noun. Thanks for any insight you may be able to provide. Bielle 20:27, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Idioms and expressions like "my bad" don't always abide by the grammatical rules that apply elsewhere in the language. You're right that "my bad" is basically a synonym for "my mistake" or "it's my fault". There's a post by Geoff Pullum at Language Log on the origins of the phrase --Miskwito 20:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Miskwito, for the reference. I have never heard the phrase spoken, but I see it frequently here on Wikipedia. I kept looking for a completion ("My bad . . .what?"), but came shortly to the conclusion that not everyone could have made the same typing error. Bielle 00:53, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd always heard it as an abbreviation/running together of 'Am I bad?'. It just goes to show, you never know. (And that folk etymologies are usually wrong!) Skittle 01:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I hear it tons and use it every once in awhile. It's really more used to acknowledge that it's your fault. I see it almost like a combination between "don't worry about it" / "I'm sorry" type thing. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

"My bad" is a more annoying (but less Latin) version of mea culpa. In some dialects, "bad" is also a noun, BTW. The Jade Knight 08:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

To me as a British English speaker it definitely sounds like an Americanism, and grates horribly. It's like saying 'no fair' when you mean 'it's not fair', something that you should have grown out of by age 8. Cyta 09:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I asked the same question last year, see [2]. The other thing to note is that it has a flippant undertone of "don't care" about it - it roughly means "I made a mistake, so what". --Richardrj ^{talk email} 09:58, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

You can use it like that, but it's by no means required. Oddly enough, the first place I heard it was in pick-up basketball, just like the Language Log link above says, and of course when it's used there it's not going to have that flippantness about it since you don't want your teammates to hate you. Recury 13:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I've never thought of "my bad" as having a flippant tone of "I don't care" at all. I do associate it with sports, though. I think of it as a quick way of acknowledging an error as one's own without necessarily apologizing for it. I've seen a parallel in choral singing, where some people will raise their hand with the index finger extended when they make a mistake, as a way of signaling to the director that they are aware of the mistake they just made. —Angr 13:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

And I actually first started hearing it and using it because of tennis... Maybe it did stem from sports. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 15:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I almost never use the expression, though I hear it fairly often. I agree that it is not necessarily dismissive and can indicate a genuine apology. I am an American and probably one of the older contributors here, and I can testify that this expression entered American English during the 1990s, or the 1980s at the earliest. I have not owned a television for several decades, and when I started to hear that expression, I assumed that it, like so many others, was popularized on TV. Whether it originally came from the sports world, I don't know. Marco polo 18:00, 6 August 2007 (UTC)