Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 January 4

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.

January 4

Negative Form of Need

Hello. When should I use "do not need" and "need not"? For example, "You need not apply" and "You do not need to apply". Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 04:19, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

There's a not-so-subtle distinction between these forms, but it may depend on the context. "Previous applicants need not apply" is much like "Unqualified applicants need not apply" - the previous applicants have already been rejected and won't be reconsidered, so it would be a waste of both their own and the committee's time for them to keep on trying. On the other hand, "Previous applicants do not need to apply" suggests that their applications will be reconsidered in the light of any new ones that may be submitted. The choice will be made from the entire pool of applicants. The committee is looking for a bigger field, and some better applicants, but they would be prepared to choose from the original field if no new ones or no better ones are submitted. It does not, however, mean that all the original applications are acceptable. All it means is that at least one of them is acceptable, but that one is not necessarily yours. If in any doubt, interpret "Previous applicants do not need to apply" as "We will reconsider existing applications as they stand, but would also look favourably on revised applications demonstrating further claims to the position". It might therefore be in your interests to submit an improved application to bolster your chances.

So, to answer your question, if you're wanting to say "Please do not waste our time", use "You need not apply", but if you're wanting to say "You may apply, but you don't need to", use "You do not need to apply". -- JackofOz (talk) 04:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Both sentences looked the same to me. Having read the previous answer though, I believe Jack has given us (at least me)some food for thought.

I have been taught that an important distinction happens in the past forms needn't have and didn't need to. While the latter simply states the absence of a necessity in the past, needn't have expresses the idea of an unnecessary action having been performed. So, "The student needn't have brought the certificate" implies that the student actually did bring it. Pallida  Mors 04:56, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

More than that: I believe "needn't have" implies the futility of the action. Contrast

• He didn't need to try—the job was already his and

• She needn't have tried—the job had already been given away with

• *He needn't have tried—the job was already his and

• *She didn't need to try—the job had already been given away. Tesseran (talk) 08:11, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Which Language And

Which dialect has the most vowels and which dialect has the most consanants?75.152.131.91 (talk) 05:49, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing that most answers will focus on ethe phonemic or phonological inventory of the languages; that is, how many vowel sounds and consonantal sounds the language has. (For example, English has 13 to 22 "vowel sounds".) The section phoneme#Phonological extremes should answer this question, at least enough for you to understand and learn more about what it means to ask about "most vowels". If you are asking about the written representation of the languages, then you should be aware that this question is far less meaningful and no good answer is possible. (No answer at all, really.) Tesseran (talk) 08:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean the languages with the most different vowel and consonant sounds, or the ones which sound to consist of all vowels or all consonants? SaundersW (talk) 18:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

"The ratio of vowels and consonants used in Finnish speech is 100:96. This ratio is 100: 188 in Czech; 100:177 in German; 100:141 in French and Hungarian; ..." is a tantalising snippet from this paper. SaundersW (talk) 11:00, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Another tantalising snippet: "A previous cross-cultural study (Munroe et al. 1996) found that CV score (the percentage of CV syllables in the average word) can vary across languages from less than 20% to more than 80%." in this paper. SaundersW (talk) 11:09, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Bulgarian: medical treatment at the witch

Can anyone translate the few bulgarian words on this picture (klick twice to fully enlarge)? It's a mural painting in the church of the Rila Monastery. -- Cherubino (talk) 08:19, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

It's hard to make out the characters. AllenHansen (talk) 12:27, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure it's Bulgarian, and not Church Slavonic? Xn4 18:42, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

This might be clearer. If the cursor turns into a magnifying glass klick again. I don't know whether it is bulgarian or church slavonic. -- Cherubino (talk) 06:52, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I had done that, and it is still hard to make out the individual characters, but it seems to be church slavonic, as someone said. AllenHansen (talk) 20:13, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Months!

WHY AREN'T ANY OF THE MONTHS, JANUARY, JUNE, ETC, CONSIDERED VALID WORDS? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.194.78.52 (talk) 17:22, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Not sure I understand your question... in the English language they are considered proper nouns, but those are still words. What do you mean by "valid," and who is it that does not consider them to be so? (Also, can I ask you please to NOT SHOUT? Thanks.) - Eron^Talk 17:38, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Word games like Scrabble often consider proper nouns like the names of months, countries, etc as invalid words. SaundersW (talk) 18:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't have put it quite like that. They don't "consider" them to be invalid words per se; what they do is, for reasons I've never understood they ban the use of proper nouns in the game. I can understand banning words that contain hyphens and apostrophes, because there are no tiles for those symbols and spelling a word such as "don't" as "dont" will simply not do (well, until the advent of webspeak, anyway). But what's wrong with using a proper noun if you have the letters to spell it? -- JackofOz (talk) 20:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe a reason is that there's no obvious limit for what could count as a proper noun, or more importantly any criterion for deciding what should be allowed. 'Zyzxqjw? Yes of course it's valid - it was the name of my first hamster. Now, how many points is that...?' AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:47, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Games have rules. Evidently, the people who made up the Scrabble rules thought "no proper nouns" would be a good rule. One might just as easily say "why can't you direct the ball using your hands in soccer/football? What's wrong with making a goal if you toss the ball into the net?" You are free to make your own word and/or ball game that allows anything you like. --LarryMac | Talk 20:56, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

And, forbidding proper nouns makes it much easier for disputes over what is and is not a word - for the purposes of the game - to be resolved. - Eron^Talk 21:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that's what I said... AndrewWTaylor (talk) 21:43, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes, perhaps, but I added the spiffy wikilink... - Eron^Talk 21:47, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Touché! AndrewWTaylor (talk) 21:59, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course, 3 of the 12 months do form valid words for Scrabble, because the same spellings without a capital letter are used as words with other meanings. --Anonymous, 23:36 UTC, January 4, 2008.

But there's still the question why names of months are considered proper nouns. Is it the same for days of the week and seasons of the year? Is is just because they're written with a capital letter? Note that in many other languages, they are written with lower case letters (janvier, febbraio, marzec, апрель...) and they're considered common nouns there. — Kpalion^(talk) 12:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

According to Noun#Proper_nouns_and_common_nouns, 'Proper nouns (also called proper names) are nouns representing unique entities (such as London, Universe or John), as distinguished from common nouns which describe a class of entities (such as city, well or person)'. That seems a reasonable definition to me. It goes on: 'In English and most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, proper nouns are usually capitalised.', with a non-specific reference to www.englishforums.com. This is clearly wrong (for some value of 'usually'), given the example of day and month names in French and other romance languages. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It's also wrong for German; not in the sense that proper names aren't capitalised (because they are), but in the sense that all nouns are capitalised so there's nothing special about proper nouns in this context. -- JackofOz (talk) 03:10, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Good point, Jack. Wandering off-topic, it made me wonder whether there's any tendency in 'colloquial' written German to drop the capitalisation of nouns. Not as in the way people tend to use lower-case when writing emails in English, but in any 'respectable' context. Would this look as 'incorrect' to a native German speaker as "i met peter in cambridge on a monday in june" would to me if I saw it in print? And how do Germans feel when they first discover that other languages don't capitalise their nouns? AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:54, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I can't answer your second question, but I think I can answer your first question negatively. In my 11 years in Germany I've seen any amount of colloquial written German, and it's really only in e-mails and the like that there's any tendency to decap nouns. If my husband writes me a note, he writes "Ich bin zu einem Kumpel gefahren um sein Auto zu reparieren" (I've gone to a friend's house to fix his car); he'd never write "kumpel" and "auto" small; it would be as wrong as your "cambridge in june" example above. (And my husband dropped out of school in order to avoid failing the 8th grade for a second time, so this is not someone entrenched in formal education!) —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:39, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Since we're talking about Scrabble and capitalization... am I the only who thinks it's ironic that every letter in the game is capitalized, yet you can't use any words that normally contain capitals at all? Matt Deres (talk) 17:25, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Great Scott! I've been playing Scrabble for 50 years, and that never occurred to me before. (Maybe it's time I went and had a really, really long sleep). -- JackofOz (talk) 22:44, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Help with Italian

How do you say "to get high on something" (in the sense of getting euphoric after consuming an intoxicating substance) in Italian? If there are several expressions to say that, please indicate how colloquial each expression is. Grazie mille. -- Leptictidium (mammal talk!) 22:41, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

From Oxford Paravia Italian Dictionary (the big one):

High (on drugs): sballato.

To be high on __: essere sovreccitato per __.

To get high: sballare, sovreccitarsi.

But do take care, OK? :)

– Noetica^♬♩ Talk 23:04, 4 January 2008 (UTC)