Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 May 25

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May 25

Double acronyms

How many acronyms are there that have two official expansions at the same time to refer to the same thing? (The only example I know of is ATWA.) NeonMerlin 00:17, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

If you're willing to go for fictitious entries, the Marvel comic-book based espionage group SHIELD has gone through at least three names. Originally, it stood for Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division, which then became Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage Logistics Directorate. In the excellent Iron Man movie, they changed it to Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division and made a bit of a joke about how clumsy the name was. Matt Deres (talk) 02:33, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

ESL is English Sign Language and English as a Second Language for one, there are lots more. This site has long lists [1] --Lisa4edit (talk) 05:23, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

But the question was about acronyms with two official expansions referring to the same thing. English sign language and English a second language aren't the same thing. "PTL" in the PTL Club can stand for either "Praise The Lord" or "People That Love". —Angr 07:48, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't PTL revealed to secretly stand for "Pass The Loot" during the Bakker trials? -SandyJax (talk) 14:12, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

WWF was both wrestling and wildlife until Vince McMahon changed his.hotclaws 07:58, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but again, the World Wrestling Federation and the World Wildlife Fund are not the same thing. The question was about acronyms with multiple expansions that refer to the same thing. —Angr 08:01, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The NT in 'Windows NT' has at times stood for N10, New Technology, and nothing at all. Paul Davidson (talk) 08:41, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

As in Nothing aT all? :-) —Angr 08:44, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I've seen several acronyms for organizations which changed one of the words somewhere along the line, either because the scope of the group changed, the image they wanted to project changed, or one of the words took on negative connotations. However, nothing as radical as ATWA. kwami (talk) 10:05, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Lots, especially in context of computers. What comes into my mind is "GCC": it has changed from "GNU C compiler" to "GNU compiler collection" when they unified it with G++ and all the other backends for non-C languages. – b_jonas 11:13, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

There's also this joke about the expansion of "GNU" itself. – b_jonas 11:18, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Nice question by the way. I wonder if there's a name for such acronyms. – b_jonas 11:21, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

We could try to coin one (dualternyms, hehe) but I think that "constant rebranding disorder" is the real answer doktorb _words^deeds 11:34, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

DVD was originally "digital video disk" but is now "digital versatile disk". But then the OP specified "two official expansions at the same time", and I think with DVD the official expansion changed from one to the other, rather than the two being official at the same time. —Angr 11:59, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

If you're willing to accept backronyms then sic could be (from the article):

"spelling is correct", "same in copy", "spelling intentionally conserved", "said in context", or "sans intention comique" (French: without comic intent).

Zain Ebrahim (talk) 13:15, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The expansion of snafu is rendered differently, depending on how profane one chooses to be. Deor (talk) 13:20, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, good example. That goes to "RTFM" as well. – b_jonas 17:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I know it's not quite an acronym, but SQ came to mind - the one written on restaurant menus next to expensive items. At least in my country they do that, don't know about others. I never quite knew what it stood for. Googling around suggests "special quotation", "subject to quotation", "seasonal quotation", "subject to quality", "Salon Qualitaire". I always thought it meant "special quisine" but that was my misconception carried over from parents who didn't want me to see them as lacking in knowledge. I'm surprised wiki doesn't have an article on this. Looking it this it might after all be a South African thing. Any ideas would be appreciated. Sandman30s (talk) 21:51, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Somali and Arabic

Is there a website where I can compare Somali letters with Arabic letters? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Don Mustafa (talk • contribs) 02:08, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at http://www.omniglot.com/writing/somali.htm and the pages it links to. Maybe you'll find something there. Wikipedia has articles on the Latin Somali alphabet and Wadaad's writing (i.e. the Arabic alphabet for Somali), as well as on Osmanya script and Borama script, but no direct comparison. —Angr 07:44, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

How can I learn to write better?

Besides doing the obvious (like reading a lot), and considering that I have no access to a private teacher, where is the way to go? 217.168.4.191 (talk) 03:28, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Write as in creative writing or write as in spelling, grammar etc. ? I think [2] is pretty amazing, but sort of hard to navigate, although they have a search window. You might also read some literary criticism. --Lisa4edit (talk) 05:13, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the Purdue link. I'll take a look. 217.168.4.191 (talk) 12:55, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried blogging about what you read, the issues of the day and so on? (You kids have it easy: in my day we had to kill and skin our own mimeo ...) — Ben Franklin said that, to teach himself to write well, he would read an essay, jot down its themes, and try to recreate the essay from his notes. — You could do worse than to read Fowler's Modern English Usage: some of the specifics of his advice are dated or (imho) wrongheaded, but overall it expresses good instincts. —Tamfang (talk) 23:06, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

(More thoughts.) Don't expect to get it right on the first try; cut'n'paste is your friend! Get something on the screen quickly, and then organize it. You might start by getting down all the key phrases you can think of (each on a separate line), then organizing them into sentences, then arranging the sentences into a paragraph. Avoid the cheap journalistic habit of bundling unrelated points in one sentence just to get them in somewhere: "A devout Christian and avid organist, Knuth began writing The Art of Computer Programming in 1967..." —Tamfang (talk) 00:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

A great piece that last one, but if you want general suggestions on how to improve, the best way is to reflect a lot. Keep everything you write, read it back to yourself when you've forgotten what it was about, and you will see it in a new light. When you read some of your howlers, you may remember previously thinking of them as brilliancies, whereas most of your elegant turns of phrase will have seemed innocuous at the time. That Ben Franklin advice looks pretty good also - you don't have to follow it to the letter, but in considering the writing of others, it's good to see if you can recreate small portions of it in your head. I do this myself, trying to remember, or rewrite, snippets of things that have impressed me, and it always shows up my deficiencies, and occasionally, my limited strengths. 130.95.106.128 (talk) 11:00, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Signs on artwork

Hello. There is an art display in our local courthouse that changes every month or so. This month there are some Japanese chigiri-e works featuring landscapes and buildings. Two of the works are of small shops or businesses, I believe, because they have signs on them. I just wonder what the signs say. Here are details of them from the artwork:

(1) File:Art sign 1.jpg (2) File:Art sign 2.jpg.

Thank you. — Michael J 11:48, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

They're not anything I recognise. I would take them as a non-Japanese artist's impression of katakana - which would be unlikely to be used in that context anyway, unless the businesses had foreign names. --ColinFine (talk) 12:22, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Not Japanese. They look like old Semitic graffiti to me, but with such simple shapes they could be just about anything. kwami (talk) 12:46, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for trying. I wasn't sure. (If they are katakana, maybe they are personal names on homes. Images of the entire artworks are here and here.) — Michael J 13:24, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Having seen the pictures, I'm even more convinced that they are an artist's impression of a script he or she doesn't read - but they don't look the slightest bit authentic, because their simplicity is reminiscent of katakana, which as I said would not be normal in that sort of context. --ColinFine (talk) 13:33, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Modern artists can be quite devious. It's quite likely it means nothing and its purpose it to make you wonder what it means.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 18:42, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

It is definitely not authentic katakana. As everyone says, it is either a non-native artist's impression of it, or something else. It is unreadable as katakana, and nobody in their right minds in Japan would put an unreadable name plate outside their house. How else is the postman going to deliver the post, considering houses don't have house numbers and most streets don't have names?--ChokinBako (talk) 19:57, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you all. I will give up trying to understand them, then, and just enjoy the pretty pictures. — Michael J 20:16, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Considering they're on shop fronts, if they were modeled after anything it was probably an impressionistic recollection of hiragana or perhaps grass-style kanji. kwami (talk) 23:11, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Untitled

"We can see who the richest person is".

"We can see who is the richest person".

Are there grammatical rules to assert whether either of these is incorrect? ----Seans Potato Business 13:56, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. In indirect questions like these, the verb doesn't move to the front to follow the fronted interrogative pronoun "who", as it does in direct questions. So "We can see who the richest person is" is correct, and "*We can see who is the richest person" is incorrect. In a direct question, it would be the other way around: "Who is the richest person?" is correct, and "*Who the richest person is?" is incorrect. —Angr 14:07, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. ----Seans Potato Business 15:22, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

That analysis must be wrong, because both sentences are correct. I think the second one is more likely to be used when there's a context referring to a small group of people, so that "who" refers implicitly to one of the group. And I have no idea of why that would be. --Anonymous, 08:30 UTC, May 26, 2008.

The second sentence is certainly awkward, if not outright wrong. It sounds like a typical foreigner's error. Paul Davidson (talk) 11:12, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The second sentence is correct if we can see that the person on first base is the richest. —Angr 14:42, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Funny joke. In everyday speech and writing, "We can see who the richest person is" is right. The second variation, "We can see who is the richest person", is perfectly good English, too. If we make it "We can see which is the richest person", its validity becomes obvious, and we wouldn't as readily say "We can see which the richest person is." --Milkbreath (talk) 14:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

If we can see who is standing at the door, then we can also see who is the richest. — I reckon that a native speaker would say who is foo when who means which one of these, but who foo is otherwise. —Tamfang (talk) 00:15, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Placebo effect

I was just watching an episode of House, where a woman was touch by a spiritual healer and no longer needed a zimmer frame to walk. Assuming that this was not an act of God, is there a word/phrase for it? I know what the Placebo effect is but that doesn't seem quite right for my needs. Thanks 92.2.194.36 (talk) 14:46, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Autosuggestion? ---Sluzzelin talk 15:09, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I can come up with several more: Psychosomatic healing, Pygmalion effect, Post hoc ergo propter hoc subconscious effects, or any other by-product of strong optimism. I don't know if there are any more adequate (and less cynical) expressions for what you refer to... Kreachure (talk) 17:29, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Observer-expectancy effect, Therapeutic effect or Expectation? Think outside the box 19:28, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Fiction? --Nicknack009 (talk) 23:09, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

You might be looking for spontaneous remission. The confluence or merging of elements making up the circumstances is usually said to be serendipitous. Julia Rossi (talk) 23:23, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Um, yeah, what she said. Thanks for making me feel irrelevant, Julia! :P Kreachure (talk) 23:36, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

No way is that! I'm going to have fun clicking through your answer next chance I get. : ) Julia Rossi (talk) 01:29, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

You might like to watch to the end of the episode, where a medically sounds explanation for the healing is given (due, if I remember, to some sort of virus transmission from the contact). So in the context of the show it is neither Autosuggestion, Psychosomatic, or any of the other of the subconscious effects. DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:53, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

IPA for Oier Olazábal

Hi, can someone transcribe the Spanish pronunciation of Oier Olazábal for me? Thank you. --Kjoonlee 21:41, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

/ɒiɛr ɒlæ'θæbæl/ (the á represents stress vowel in that case). I'm a native Spanish speaker, but I'm not too familiarized with IPA; still, I think it's very accurate. Kreachure (talk) 23:26, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. By /æ/ do you mean the near-open front unrounded vowel as in English "trap"? . --Kjoonlee 23:57, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Following the orthography, in Castellano it would be Spanish pronunciation: [oiˈer olaˈθaβal]. Or do you want Catalan? kwami (talk) 00:16, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, kwami's is much better. Forget mine. T_T Still, I think the Help:IPA for Spanish page is pretty confusing for English speakers, so if you need help hearing it, I recommend checking Help:IPA's audio samples. Kreachure (talk) 00:30, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

grammar

Is this literary piece 'as good as I could write', 'as well as I could write', both or neither? (the question is not about literary pieces but English grammar) ----Seans Potato Business 21:54, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I assume "right" is a typo for "write." I'd say "as good as" in such cases. --Kjoonlee 21:59, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

That's right, I meant 'write'! ----Seans Potato Business 22:56, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

If the literary piece is as good as I could have written it, the author must have done it as well as I could have done it. --Kjoonlee 22:00, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you both! ----Seans Potato Business 22:57, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

If Seans gives a **** about my opinion, you can say both and get away with it. Ericthebrainiac (talk) 23:40, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I doubt that, Eric. We're talking about the quality of the text (good/bad), not how the writer wrote it (well/badly). -- JackofOz (talk) 22:11, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

"As well as I could write" is correct written English, the use of the word "good" in this context is colloquial and rather informal. "Good" is also an over-used word, much like the word "nice".Katana Geldar 23:00, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I suspect you're getting that exactly backwards, Katana, and that's my job around here. Please provide us with the complete sentence that you are referring to when you say that the use of "good" in it is colloquial. Also, I don't think it's possible for a basic core word like "good" to become hackneyed. --Milkbreath (talk) 23:13, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Shawshank Redemption (film), "I don't spell so good." Quote not verbatim. --Kjoonlee 18:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you're getting at, Milkbreath. I'd never say "This literary piece is as well as I could write." --Kjoonlee 18:39, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Compare the difference: "This piece is as good as I could write it" vs. "I wrote this piece as well as I could (write it)". -- JackofOz (talk) 22:28, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Compare that difference to some other difference, or what? :P —Tamfang (talk) 01:48, 29 May 2008 (UTC)