Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 November 26

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 26

Short latin translation

Could anyone tell me how to correctly translate "arts and sciences" into latin. artes et scientia? ars et scientia? artes et scientiae?...or something different? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.39.36 (talk) 01:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Literally it'd be your third suggestion "artes et scientiae." And authors such as Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Richard de Bury, and John Case (we need a Wikipedia article on him) used the phrase, so it's safe. That said, while it's based on kosher Aristotelian distinctions, it sounds a bit "newfangled" to me. In the Medieval university, the "arts and sciences" were known simply as artes (or more fully artes liberales). Wareh (talk) 02:38, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It didn't exist then, but it does now: our article on John Case. Wareh (talk) 04:39, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Hirohito's speech: 1945 and afterwards

Japan's Emperor Hirohito's first speech to his nation was on the occasion of Japan's capitulation to the allies in 1945 after the atomic bombings of two of his cities. It is said that he spoke in a language or form of speech not understood by the commmon Japanese people. Over the next 40 year plus did he speak to his people on additional occasions, and was the language he used intelligible to the Japanese people? What was there about his manner of speaking, his accent, his grammar, or his vocabulary which made him unintelligible to the people? Was there a purpose in speaking "over the heads" of the people, or was it an oversight? Did he address his military and governmental leaders in the same mode of speech during the war? Edison (talk) 03:43, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

According to the article:

"Hirohito's speech marked what was probably the first time in history that an Emperor of Japan had spoken (albeit via a phonograph record) to the common people. The speech was delivered in the formal, somewhat archaic Japanese used by the old Imperial Court. Additionally, Hirohito's speech made no direct reference to surrender, instead stating that he had instructed his government to fully accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. This created confusion in the minds of many listeners who were not sure if Japan had surrendered or if Hirohito was exhorting them to resist the enemy invasion. The poor audio quality of the radio broadcast, as well as the excessively formal courtly language in which the speech was composed, only compounded the confusion."

Hope this helps, Falconus^{p t c} 11:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I read that before placing the question. The excerpt does not answer my questions. 1) In what mode of speech did he address his people over the balance of his reign, well into the 1980's? 2) The article says "formal, somewhat archaic.." if Truman had spoken to the American people at the end of WW2 in comparable "formal, somewhat archaic" speech would it have been more like Elizbethan speech, Middle English, Latin, or what, in terms of the percentage of the population who understood it? 3) Was it an oversight, or was there some objective in speaking unintelligibly to the populace? 4) Did his political cabinet and military commanders hear such speech from him during the war and did they understand it? Edison (talk) 03:32, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

What I heard him speaking after the war on TV news were intelligible. He spoke gently and politely. It seems he always had been careful and discreet when he spoke, tryng not to be controversial. As for the first speech, it was a very important historical announce, so natulally it had to be formal. You think too much about it. As for the question #2, it was the first speech so almost all people were not able to recognize if it was his true voice. And think about the time, who surveyed how many understood the speech and how many not? As for the question #4, only the cabinet members and the military commanders knew. Oda Mari (talk) 07:20, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Given that we have a full transcript of the speech, I think a modern Japanese speaker could answer question 2 (I am very interested in the answer actually: how archaic compared to English? my supicion is that it would be a sort of equivalent to King James bible English, but I would love confirmation). Regarding 3, we need a Japanese historian: Did the emperor mean to be so different in his mastering of the language, or did he fail to see that he would not be understood? As for question 4: I know nothing about Japan, but I can be pretty certain that they did understand it, or else how would they even communicate with him? The emperor certainly had learned this archaic language from somewhere, most probably his own court, and the highest ranking government members and military would be part of the court. --Lgriot (talk) 09:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Though it's a speech, it's written in Bungo (Japanese language). I think that is the another reason to make the speech difficult to understand. But of course he didn't speak that way all the time. Must have been more naturally and frankly especially when he spoke to the family members and friends, like anybody else. Oda Mari (talk) 15:59, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessarily true. Being quite isolated from the masses, the imperial court may have used different language from the rest, especially if this language difference was used to signify their differences from the common people. In the US, for example, the relatively isolated Amish use archaic English, primarily to emphasize their separation from "the English". StuRat (talk) 16:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but you are wrong. I am a native Japanese. I've never visited their home, but I've heard them speaking through media a lot. They always speak politely and don't use slangs though. I actually knew one of Hirohito's grandsons in school and there was no differnce the language he spoke. Oda Mari (talk) 17:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Romaji titles for Japanese patents

File:JP-H10-101333-A title.png

Title of patent 10-101333: Production of Yttrium Aluminum Garnet Fine Powder

I'm trying to write an article for J. Amer. Cer. Soc., and the editorial policy requires both original-language and translated (English) titles, for any foreign-language sources. I have translations of some Japanese patents that I want to cite, but am having all kinds of trouble working with the original-language sources.

Can someone please transcribe the following two titles for me? I'd prefer to have both Romaji and ISO characters, but if it's more convenient to do just one of these, I'm happy for any help you can offer.

Lastly, if there's a simpler way to obtain this same information (e.g., through a machine-transliteration utility), I'd be happy to hear about it.

If these aren't titles, please forgive me...the titles are prefaced with a (54) in the English translations. I can go back and get a larger image, if that's the case.

Thanks in advance! --Joel (talk) 06:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The common Hepburn romanization for each is:

• (Top) (54) [hatsumei no meishō] ittoriumu aruminiumu gānetto bifuntai no seizōhōhō
• (Bottom) (54) [hatsumei no meishō] ittoriumu aruminiumu gānetto funmatsu no seizōhōhō

The initial "hatsumei no meishō" (発明の名称) just means "name of discovery" and can probably be omitted.

By ISO, do you mean ISO 3602 (Kunrei)? Bendono (talk) 07:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! You're a life-saver.--Joel (talk) 17:33, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

history of Alphabets

1. How do ancient people come up with an alphabet that starts with letter A and ends in letter Z?

2. How did they come up with the order of the alphabet?

2. Why does it start in letter A and end in letter Z?

Thank you for any answer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.213.89.57 (talk) 14:33, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

You may be interested in reading the articles English alphabet and History of the Latin alphabet, also the referred subjects from those articles such as the Old Italic alphabet. A lot of the latin alphabet was borrowed from both the Cumae and Etruscan alphabets. Unfortunately, as a lot of letters and complete alphabets were formed over 2000 years ago - some areas about their formation remains undiscovered. Recent changes are more well documents such as the supposition that up until the 16th century, Z wasn't always the last letter. 84.65.85.58 (talk) 14:49, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

In "History of the alphabet#Letter Names and Sequence of Some Alphabets" it says that tablets were found from the fourteenth century BCE showing the present order (minus some letters, of course). That places the inception of our alphabetic order in the distant past, so documentation will be scarce, to say the least. --Milkbreath (talk) 15:07, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

History of the Greek alphabet is also helpful. Xn4 21:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Ultimately, the order of the letters in any alphabet was arbitrary and remains a matter of agreement by the people who use it (not that I'm proposing any changes now). There's nothing "sacred" (if you like) about starting with A or any other letter, or having any particular order after that. Jesus did say he was "the alpha and the omega", but if the extreme letters of the Greek alphabet happened to be Μ and Ν, he'd have said "I am the mu and the nu". :) -- JackofOz (talk) 21:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

That would have been great for Christian rappers - "Ah said I am da mu/yeah, 'n' Ah am da nu/'N' 2000 years ago I died for you." Steewi (talk) 23:45, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

the word "cut"

why is this word "cut" the same in its past and past participle form? is there any etymological explanation to this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.213.89.57 (talk) 14:36, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't really know, but I would look into other verbs ending with "-d" or "-t", especially old ones. Hit, put, set, and bet seem to be similar. Sit is a bit different. (To learn more, I'd look into Germanic weak verb as a first step.) --Kjoonlee 18:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

You could add "shut" to that list. By the way, it is not uncommon for a word to be the same in the past and past participle (eg I walked, I have walked) What is rare is that the present tense is the same as the past and the past participle. I suspect that they are a special case of strong verbs where the vowel shift (eg sing, sang, sung: ring, rang, rung: run, ran, run: sit, sat, sat) has resulted in vowels which a further shift has brought back together (as has happened to a lesser extent in my last two examples). SaundersW (talk) 19:32, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I do not think that "cut" is a case of a strong verb. I think that it is a weak verb like "set", in which historic forms such as "setted" or "cutted" with their awkward double dental consonants were contracted to a form matching the modern infinitive and present (non-3rd-person-singular) forms. Marco polo (talk) 21:31, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

This is interesting, Marco. I've made some initial searches and the evidence seems to be that the historic past participle of "cut" was "cutten" which could make us both wrong, and the real answer something more subtle. SaundersW (talk) 09:51, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The verb "cut" is not very old in English, having come from Scandanavian only in the 13th century. It is not Germanic, and so has a history separate from verbs that came up through Old English. The OED shows early variants cutte, kitte, kette, with past participles cut, kyt, kit, kett, and mentions that these are the same forms as were used with the Germanic shut. This suggests that cut adopted the forms of shut at the time of its entry into the language. There was probably a tendency, as Marco polo pointed out above, to avoid repetition of the "t" or "d" sound usually used to form the past participle. We can't know exactly how these words sounded to those who spoke them, but the existence of the participles shut, put, cut of the only short transistive verbs in -ut seems to indicate a phonetic force at work. Even today we don't like fitted or wetted very much. --Milkbreath (talk) 12:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

uncivilize?

is it appropriate to use the word "uncivilize" or not? why? or why not? Some people say that there is no such word --- it must be "not civilize" what do you have to say? thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.213.91.246 (talk) 15:57, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

You can make any word you want with "un-" plus a verb. Some of them already have an established equivalent and so are useless, like "unwet" (dry) or "unclimb" (descend). Others will be perfectly good nonce words, and yours looks like one of those. You have to be sure that its meaning is clear from the context, though. Just standing there, it seems to me to mean somehing like "condition out the learned behaviors that correspond to our idea of being civilized". "Not civilize" would mean something else. What is the context? --Milkbreath (talk) 16:34, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

If it means the act of turning a civilised person/society into an uncivilised one, I'd use "decivilise". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Uncivilise, to me, gives the impression of a forced change. The 'un-' morpheme leaves no sense of volition on the patient of the action. Decivilise sounds more like a process that is brought about. 'De-' has more of a sense of cooperation between the agent and patient (assuming they are different people), so the process of decivilisation is deliberate, rather than incidental. The difference is only vague to me. Decivilise sounds more like an actual word, but I wouldn't use it as a verb in an essay. Instead I'd use a phrase like 'make X uncivilised'. In fiction, you have a lot more scope for neologising (like that), so you could use it, assuming that the context makes it clear what you mean by it. Steewi (talk) 23:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It could mean to make a person less civil, in which case, certain articles here are very uncivilizing. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Arabic Question

In arabic language what's the exact difference between words "قنوط" and "یاس" in root analyzing?Flakture (talk) 16:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Well they both mean hopelessness or despair, but what do you mean about root analyzing? The roots are qaf-nun-Ta for the first and ya-hamza-sin for the second. Otherwise I guess they are just synonyms...well, actually I'm sure some Arabic grammarian has expounded at length about their exact difference, as they always seem to do, so hopefully someone knows where to find that! Adam Bishop (talk) 17:45, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The Hans Wehr glosses the first word as "to despair", and the second "to renounce, to forgo, to give up all hope (of)", so it seems the second word has a broader meaning.--K.C. Tang (talk) 09:49, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Trepidation

Is trepidatious a word? If it is, should it be spelled trepidacious? 160.10.98.106 (talk) 18:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

In short, yes, no. (Actually, you can spell it either way.) Word.

In full: "Is it a word?" Of course it's a word, you've just said it. "No, is it proper?" It follows proper rules. "Not just rules, is it acceptable?" Whether a word is acceptable or not is up to the listener to decide. "No, is it in a dictionary?" Yes, they're attested. "Then can I use them?" First see how other people use them. --Kjoonlee 18:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I guess the question really is, noun trepidation comes from adjective trepid (opposite of intrepid), and adjective trepidatious comes from noun trepidation. Therefore, isn't trepidatious is a bad derivative meaning the same as the initial word trepid and as such shouldn't be considered a proper word in english papers and such, much like ain't or ya'll.160.10.98.106 (talk) 18:49, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Should you or shouldn't you consider it that way? You're the person who should be making that decision, not some nincompoop who thinks he knows better. Link: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001652.html --Kjoonlee 18:53, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary lists "trepidatious" but marks it "informal". Most other dictionaries I looked at don't have an adjective related to "trepidation", but Merriam-Webster's Collegiate and the unabridged Webster's Third New International give both "trepid" and "trepidant". Given the choice between an informal word that's only made it in to a single dictionary and two obscure word that are only listed in dictionaries from a single publisher, I'd steer clear of them both for formal writing and say "full of trepidation" or some synonym like "fearful" instead. —Angr 18:57, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

dictionary.com has both listed. --Kjoonlee 18:58, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

If "bad" derivations really were to be avoided, we should all be saying "childer" instead of "children" because children is a double plural. --Kjoonlee 18:58, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

And "ain't" is a fine word, a fine word indeed, albeit its proper use is very limited. It's just that it has so often been used in all the wrong places that teachers have resorted to banning its use entirely, which is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of the origin, it seems that it's an acceptable word for most speakers (just like disorientated rather than my preferred disoriented), so you can use it. The spelling is a matter of convention. Trepidatious looks more correct to me. Steewi (talk) 23:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)