Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 September 29

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September 29

latin poem

Can someone translate these four lines? "Ah, si mundus iste mendax, frater, te fefellit, quare / vehemeter ita mundum increpas, et indignare? / Cuncta fatum ab aeterno designavit in aeternum, / Calamasque currens ille nescit unquam remeare." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.190.135 (talk) 07:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh if that lying world of yours, brother, chances you, to querrel

More vehemently still than than an almond cretin, and to take offense?

Once fate has written itself, from eternity to eternity,

And this current crisis becomes ours once more.

Disclaimer: I flunked through 5 years of Latin this way. The above I basically made up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.234.83.229 (talk) 11:53, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Is that the Rubaiyat, in Latin?! "Ah, if that lying world deceived you, brother, why do you rebuke and scorn the world so vehemently? From eternity it designated all things to eternal death, and that running branch [calamus, not calamas] does not ever know how to return." Adam Bishop 12:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is from Edward FitzGerald's little known Latin translation. Also, vehemeter should be vehementer.  --Lambiam 13:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Learning to read

My sister recently told me of a time she taught a native German-speaking girl to read. She wrote Eine kleine (something, I forget what) on the table and started reading aloud. Right after the first word, the girl stopped her, saying Aber das ist doch kein A! ("But that's not an A!"). My sister replied that she was right, but it was more complex than that.

This is something I've never considered, because Finnish has pretty much a complete 1-1 correspondence between written glyphs and spoken sounds. How do German-speaking children learn to read? And how do English- and French-speaking children learn to read, when their pronunciation rules are vastly more complicated? JIP | Talk 17:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

English children are often taught a kind of "cheat" reading where they first learn words where the pronunciation is predictable: cat, dog, and, but, for example. Gradually, as they start to read the overall shape of the word rather than needing to break down the individual letters, words that are sort-of predictable: was, is, has, saw, says, for example, are slipped in. It's a process that can be tricky, and my 17-year-old son who is slightly dyslexic can spell long technical words and German words with more confidence than common English words.

French children are taught on a syllabic basis, with the syllable being generally consonant-vowel. This means that when the final consonant is followed by an "e" it is pronounced as a syllable that they learn to reduce to its initial consonant, eg poi-re. In French it is easier to predict how a word is pronounced than how it is spelled, so reading is less tricky than dictation. 62.30.217.57 18:09, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I have watched both my own children learn to read English, and how they do it is... gradually. As 62 says, they start with small simple words that have clear pronunciation rules. There are actually a number of pronunciation rules that are clear and consistent, and enough words that follow them that it is possible to read texts by following them, particularly simple ones designed for children, like Dick and Jane or The Cat in the Hat. This is the basis for learning to read by phonics, which really does work in English. (Well, it werked four mee.) Once children start to encounter the more difficult or exceptional words, learning through techniques like whole language takes over. (There are of course holy wars between the advocates of both phonics and whole language as teaching metods. The best method, in my opinion, lies in taking the best of both.) - Eron ^Talk 19:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

We should note that German has a much closer correspondence of letters to sound than English does. No silent e in German (or silent p, silent h, etc.). If a letter is there, you pronounce it. I have never figured out the system of silent letters in French, though. Rmhermen 23:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe that is because there is no system.  --Lambiam 03:30, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

May one assume that's a joke? The rules are complex (and often violated in monosyllables) but they are there. Complex because, as in German, pronunciation has changed considerably since the spelling froze. —Tamfang 07:21, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not entirely a joke. I hope I did not make too many mistakes, since I don't have a French dictionary giving pronunciations, but I think that in the following list of pairs each time one word has a silent final "consonant", while in the other it is heard: estomac — micmac, croc — choc, palud — sud, clef — chef, gentil — avril, drap — cap, vils — fils, hėlas — las, avis — tournevis, concours — ours, os (pl.) — os (sing.), nuit — huit, est — Est, salut — brut, prix — six. It is hard to discover a system here. You can say these are exceptions to some rules, but then there are quite a few exceptions! To make things more difficult, there are also regional differences.  --Lambiam 22:05, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, German has a close correspondence of letters to sounds, but not as close as Finnish has. If the girl had been learning Finnish instead of German it would have worked like she originally thought. JIP | Talk 04:16, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't remember learning to read. I'm in my fifties now, but I used to try to remember when I was young, and I couldn't do it then, either. I think I must have figured out right away that English spelling isn't phonetic without even knowing what phonetic meant. They teach you the alphabet—"A" is for "apple", etc.—and that's enough to go on. If you've heard a word, it's a simple matter to correlate it with a fixed sequence of letters that approximates the word. It occurs to me that I have a lot of trouble reading phonetically now when I have to, like with drug names and Indonesian surnames, not to mention Finnish ones. Speaking of Finland, I've noticed that Finns, by and large, are very good at English. I wonder why that is, given the great difference between the languages. --Milkbreath 05:16, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's because we have to learn English as a foreign language, so we pay greater attention to getting it right. JIP | Talk 05:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

For the record, no language has 1:1 correspondence between its sounds and its writing systems. Phonological rules exist in all languages, and allophones are bound to be different from phonemes, so you can't predict 100% how written words would be pronounced in speech. Sure, you can get close enough by writing in a phonemic alphabet, but that's not the same as 100% 1:1 correspondence. Just look at consonant gradation for an example of phonological rules for Finnish. --Kjoonlee 07:14, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand. Consonant gradation#Finnish says that in the same word, the same lexical consonant can have different forms depending on the grammatical case of the word. But the form change happens the same way in both writing and speech. Of course everyone knows that the genitive of pöytä ("table") is pöydän ("table's"), not *pöytän. But it's not as if Finnish writes the t consonant the same way in both cases but pronounces it as d in the genitive case. Of course there are such things that the actual physical sounds of the same vowels and consonants vary a little depending on where they are used but these changes do not affect the grammar. Similarly, it's not a grammatical error to forget to stress the first syllable of every unit word in a compound word, it just sounds weird. JIP | Talk 08:14, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

In that case I might have been wrong about the link. But nevertheless, doesn't Finnish have words where gg or something similar is pronounced as [ŋŋ]? There are doubtlessly more cases, and there are also allophones — native speakers tend to be unaware of these, but foreigners can sometimes hear Finnish speakers using different sounds for "a single Finnish sound", I'm sure. --Kjoonlee 22:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, in Finnish nk and ng are pronounced with that "[ŋŋ]" sound, not as those consonants themselves. It is the only case of the same letter not corresponding to the same (distinguishable) sound I have ever found in Finnish. JIP | Talk 04:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm nearly 50 now, and don't really remember learning to read, though I do recall that I learned to read Welsh (which has much more nearly 1:1 correspondence between spelling and sound) before I started school, and English in school - I remember being told off for writing my name on the bedroom wallpaper when I was 4! I do remember my mother stopped reading my Mickey Mouse cartoon book to me at bedtime when I managed to pronounce "outrageous", declaring that I could read English better than she could; I can also remember my older brothers laughing at me when I applied Welsh pronunciation rules to French and English placenames - Calais as "kal-ice" rather than "kal-ay", and Sandbach as "sand-bakh" rather than "sand-batch"! Still, I only made those mistakes once, and at least I was in the last year's intake in primary school which was taught to read traditionally rather than through the Initial Teaching Alphabet, for which I am grateful! -- Arwel (talk) 08:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Spanish has no 1:1 correspondence because the same sound can be spelt with different letters, but if you get a written text you can read it aloud all right without making a single mistake. There are fixed rules to say what sound every letter represents. We would also pronounce Calais as "kal-ice", but we would pronounce Sandbach as "sand-batch", because "ch" is always pronounced as in the English word "cheap". (J.J. Castaño) 18:46, 30 September 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.39.244.142 (talk)

That's a myth, due to the existance of allophones. --Kjoonlee 22:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Which part is a myth? Allophones are determined by their environment, so they don't affect the claim that Spanish pronunciation can be uniquely inferred from spelling. —Tamfang 07:03, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Will foreign speakers be able to pronounce it correctly without prior knowledge of Spanish? --Kjoonlee 21:12, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

How often do foreign speakers get the allophones exactly right with prior knowledge? Allophonic errors aren't going to make anyone hear the wrong word. —Tamfang 22:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

In the U.S., there are two main methods used to teach kids to read: phonics and whole language. The former emphasizes sound rules, such as the "silent e" that turns "short" vowels "long;" "hard" vs. "soft" g's and c's; and combinations like "tion." (I still remember the "T-I-O-N" song from The Electric Company: "T-I-O-N, shun shun shun shun / T-I-O-N, shun shun shun shun.")

In whole language, as I understand it, children are taught entire words at a time. The focus is on the meaning of the words, and kids learn to "write" before they learn how to spell. There's been decades of debate as to which process is better, but the current trend is to use both approaches. -- Mwalcoff 02:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Kiss Me

Hi. I'm wondering what the poetic construction in the style of "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer (lyrics online everywhere) is. It's sung (or read) without regard to the line breaks in print. I vaguely remember similar poems from school, so I know someone knows. Thanks a lot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.201.150.130 (talk) 19:28, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean enjambment? Also called run-on lines. jnestorius^(talk) 01:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes, exactly. Thank you very much. 69.201.150.130 18:11, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Japanese

From what my old highschool friend told me, in Japanese, Watashi wa kawaii desu means "I'm cute". He told me the wa is some kind of focus marker, and so the sentence literally reads "speaking of me, is cute". What if I would write it as Watashi kawaii wa desu? What would that mean? Would it even be grammatical? JIP | Talk 20:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know much about Japanese, but I believe that wa has to follow a noun phrase, and that noun phrase has to be in initial position in the sentence, so I expect Watashi kawaii wa desu is ungrammatical. And although in theory wa does not necessarily mark the subject of the sentence, in practice most of the time the word marked with wa *is*, in fact, the subject of the sentence, as in Watashi wa kawaii desu. —Angr 20:26, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Errrr.... I know very little Japanese but I know you can use adjectives the same way as in English (but they are written after the name instead of before), so Watashi kawaii wa <whatever> desu would mean "speaking of beautiful me, is <whatever>". The problem in your sentence is not the position of kawaii, but that you didn't actually say what "beautiful me" is. --Taraborn 22:18, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Er, one thing I think I know about Japanese is that modifiers – including quite complex ones – precede the head rather rigidly. —Tamfang 07:34, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I do not have a strong background in Japanese either, but I can tell you that wa marks the topic of the sentence. While topic and subject are not the same thing, the difference is irrelevant in simple sentences like "~ wa ~ desu." = "~ am/are/is ~." In other words, until you have more experience with Japanese, keep your sentences simple, and only put wa right after the subject.--El aprendelenguas 22:22, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, as far as I know, *Watashi kawaii wa desu is not grammatical. Adjectives come before nouns in Japanese, like in English. Even ?Kawaii watashi wa ~ desu seems wrong to me, as if you could say in English *Beautiful I am ~. I think some adjectives change when they are used attributely from when they are used predicately in Japanese, too.--El aprendelenguas 22:27, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Though it's not grammatical, I suspect that Watashi kawaii wa desu would be understood as "cuteness is me" – to paraphrase with a common English expression, "if you look up cute in the dictionary you'll find my picture." A more grammatical version would be [...] wa watashi desu, where the first word is the noun form of kawaii whatever that is. —Tamfang 07:34, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The structure of the original sentence is not as people have assumed. Adjectives in Japanese are effectively a subset of verbs, and 'kawaii desu' is not a sequence of adjective plus copula, but a sequence of predicate + politeness-marker. (Its plain form would be 'kawaii', not 'kawaii da'). 'Watashi kawaii wa desu' is certainly not grammatical, but I suspect that it would be taken as something like 'watashi ga kawaii no desu' = 'That I am cute happens to be the case'. --ColinFine 23:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

So it works like Klingon then? JIP | Talk 05:28, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

"Watashi kawaii wa desu" sounds a lot to me like English "Cute, I am.". I'd avoid it unless you are Yoda. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 06:03, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know the correct form of "I am cute" as translated to Japanese would be "Watashi no kawaii desu." I am a student of Japanese with a spoken fluency level of a native speaker, however I would consider myself nearly illiterate in hiragana, katakana, and kanji(aka kana). 72.194.124.216 00:02, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Why no rather than wa? (If that's not too ineffable to explain to someone who doesn't speak the language at all!) —Tamfang 03:31, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I am not a language teacher so am unqualified to explain further. 72.194.124.216 01:34, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

"Watashi kawaii wa desu" is completely wrong as well as "Watashi no kawaii desu". "Watashi wa kawaii desu" is the only correct way to say "I'm cute" in Japanese regarding the position of the particle "wa". For further information: "Watashi no kawaii desu" would mean something like "My cute is" which doesn't make sense at all and isn't even a sentence.

Symbol for the word Lively in Aramic,Arabic, or Korean

I wanted to see the symbol fo the word Lively. I would greatly appreciate this I am trying to get a tattoo dedicated to my mother saying the The Lively Lost One.

Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.184.84.28 (talk) 21:18, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

In general I'd advise against getting tattoos in a writing system with which the tattoo artist is not truly familiar. There are enough horror stories already of people who got a tattoo in Chinese or Hebrew or such, to find out later – too late – that through bad advice, or a copying error, or a seemingly irrelevant modification, their tattoos were actually misspelled, or grammatically incorrect, or incomprehensible, or meaningless, or worse.  --Lambiam 22:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's a funny story about that. A.Z. 22:40, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that story is entirely accurate, at least the "expert" they've "consulted" is no expert at all. Rock n' Roll in Chinese (摇滚) does literally translates to "to sway/shake and roll", although "guts" (as in courage) would better translate to "gall bladder" in Chinese (胆) than intestines :p. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Hanzi Smatter, a blog "dedicated to the misuse of chinese characters in western culture", includes many bogus tattoos. —Tamfang 19:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

As a native speaker of both English and Korean, I can assure you there's no easy way to translate "the Lively Lost One" into Korean, and even if there were, it wouldn't have the same effect. --Kjoonlee 22:49, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I know that's not the question, but I can't think of a way to translate "lively" into Portuguese either. A.Z. 06:27, 1 October 2007 (UTC)