Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 June 10

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June 10

Unicode Question

Upon viewing the page for the language of Deseret, the letters that are in Unicode don't show up.

What should I do?

Probably you don't have a font installed that includes the Deseret letters. I don't know what fonts have them; you could Google around and set what you find. —Angr 04:40, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem may be related to the fact that in Unicode the Deseret alphabet is outside the Basic Multilingual Plane. If that is the case, then presumably you will not see any of the characters of the scripts listed at Mapping of Unicode characters#Supplementary Multilingual Plane. I wouldn't know how to solve this. Perhaps people at the Wikipedia:Help desk or Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing would know what to do. You should tell which OS and browser you're using.  --Lambiam^Talk 08:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

do they speak english?

i have this thinking that English is spoken (at least by some) in all the countries that were colonized by England. Am I right? I mean, they colonized america, and australia, so people from those places speak english. Some even made that language their national language. Please enlighten me if I am wrong. thank you very much..

• Well, out of all the places that England colonised:

English is the official language: Australia, basically the entire Caribbean, Ascension Island, Solomon Islands, Falklands, The Gambia; Ghana; Guernsey; Ireland; Mauritius; Montserrat; Nigeria; Zimbabwe; Sierra Leone

Countries with English as one of the main languages: Canada, New Zealand, Guyane, Lesotho, Botswana, Cameroon (Anglophone part); Belize; Fiji; Kiribati; Tuvalu; Hong Kong; Pakistan; India; Kenya; Malta; Vanuatu; Malawi; Papua New Guinea; Pitcairn Islands; Seychelles; South Africa; Swaziland; Tonga; Tanzania; Uganda; Western Samoa.

Countries with vestiges of English: Sri Lanka; Bangladesh; Malaysia; Maldives;

Countries in which English is no longer really spoken as a first language: Yemen, Bahrain, Brunei, Myanmar, Cyprus, Egypt; Iraq; Kuwait; Oman; Qatar; Israel and Palestine; Jordan; UAE.

I hope that that answered your question ! --It's-is-not-a-genitive 13:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

The reason why English became the only or one of the official languages varies. If you look at the countries in the List of countries where English is an official language, most (not all) were one-time English colonies, starting with Ireland. In some cases (like the United States and Australia) English was imported by the original settlers, later non-English speaking settlers adopted the language that was dominant in their environment, and the English-speaking offspring of all these settlers become the dominant population group. In other cases (like India and Nigeria), English was the administrative language in the colonial period, and – although not spoken by significant parts of the population – was retained after independence mainly because the new state was a conglomerate of many ethnic groups, speaking many often mutually unintelligible languages, and no reasonably sized subset of these local languages would have been acceptable as the only official languages. In countries like Egypt, with one or only a few powerful ethnic groups, those groups' languages became the official languages, replacing English in all sectors of public life. In several of these former colonies most people do not actually speak or understand English very well, even if English is an official language.  --Lambiam^Talk 14:08, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

A notable outlier here is Malta, where English is widely understood as a second language and is one of two official languages, yet the population is ethnolinguistically pretty homogeneous. A possibly unique case is Madagascar which recently made English an official language (beside Malagasy and French) despite never having been colonized by the U.K. or any other English-speaking country. —Angr 14:19, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Unlike many other countries, there has never been any law, proclamation or decree that makes English the official language of Australia. It is "official" only in the sense that since 1788 it has become by far the dominant language here, and all government and parliamentary communications take place in English. -- JackofOz 13:06, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

For the record, England did not colonise Guernsey. Guernsey was (and is) part of the Duchy of Normandy, and they conquered us. At some point (our article doesn't seem to indicate when) most of the population stopped speaking French and Guernésiais and started speaking English. Algebraist 14:42, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I recently transcribed some interviews done in Ghana, a few of which were in Twi or Ewe (through a translator). I noticed that whenever a measure of time was mentioned, such as four years or three months, it was in English. —Tamfang 19:43, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

formal and informal english

I am looking for samples of paragraphs one written in formal and the other in informal english to compare the two. Can anyone please tell me where I can find such on the web. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Japanese translation needed, thank you!

What does まりぽさ mean?

AlmostCrimes 17:05, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

This is written in hiragana characters. Together they spell out the word mariposa, which may perhaps refer to any of the meanings of Mariposa. Note that mariposa is the normal Spanish word for butterfly, but can also be used as an insult, as related in our article. Does any of this make sense in the context in which you encountered this?  --Lambiam^Talk 20:26, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it does entirely, thank you - I also need further translations of しあわせです and きょはにようびです. AlmostCrimes 01:15, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I know no Japanese either, but in a pinch you can often make a useful guess by just using the character table on the hiragana page plus an online dictionary. I find that しあわせです should read shi-a-wa-se-de-su, which I take to be shiawase, which means some thing like happiness or good fortune, plus desu, which is some form of "to be". "Be happy" or "Good luck"?? The second phrase きょはにようびです should read something like kyo-ha-ni-yo-u-bi-de-su. Kyoha means "wave", bi is beauty, and desu is "to be" again, but niyou or ni you seems to have many different meanings, including method, manner, kind, such as, in order to, appearance, employ, business, and calamity. Could be many things. "The waves look beautiful"?? --169.230.94.28 05:00, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Apparently "The waves look beautiful" isn't right, so if there's anyone with a good grasp of Japanese out there? Thanks for your help, anyway. AlmostCrimes 05:15, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

きょはにようびです is probably typo of きょうはにちようびです (kyo-u ha ni-chi-yo-u-bi de-su), meaning "it is sunday today". As to しあわせです, Japanese commonly drops pronouns so we need more context to be certain who is happy but I think it's safe to assume it is the speaker, that is, it probably means "I am happy". --Kusunose 12:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, that's done it for me (: AlmostCrimes 14:35, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

desu is the present indicative copula, is/are/am; it wouldn't be imperative as 169.230.94.28 guessed. —Tamfang 19:40, 12 June 2007 (UTC)