Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 September 26

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September 26

Block in avionics?

Programmable System Guides Jet to New Heights

Hi, what does "block" mean in the article above? I've looked through some on-line dictionaries but couldn't find anything obvious. --Kjoonlee 05:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't strike me as avionics or military jargon. I take it to mean just a delivery or installment. Seems to be just another word for phase of development. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:05, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Guate/ Cuate/ Watey language?

Does anyone know of a language named Guate (pronounced gwa-TAY)or something similar (qua-TAY or wa-TAY)? Where is (or was) it spoken? Does it still exist? What language family is it in? Jane Elderfield (talk) 06:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

There's a Kwatay in Senegal, a Kpwate and a Fadan Wate in Nigeria. Where did you hear of it? kwami (talk) 07:15, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Qaqet? Cua? Guató? Watut? All these are rom Ethnologue list [www.ethnologue.com] ? --Lgriot (talk) 08:20, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

There's also Guale in S. Carolina, if we start changing the t. kwami (talk) 20:58, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

"Drinking Cool Aid"

moved from village pump Gwinva (talk) 08:18, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

What is this meaning behind this expression and where did it originate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.224.88.216 (talk) 08:07, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

"Drinking the Kool-Aid" means believing the words of an untrustworthy/deranged source. It's from the Jonestown deaths in 1978, when 900 members of the Peoples Temple committed suicide or were murdered by drinking poisoned Flavor Aid, erroneously remembered as Kool-Aid. jnestorius^(talk) 08:27, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I usually hear it as meaning "demonstrating strong commitment to the cause". —Tamfang (talk) 20:45, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Mm, except it usually means "demonstrating a suicidally strong commitment to the cause." It's not a positive thing. If you drink the Kool-Aid, it means you are a cult member. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Even if the cause is, say, abolition of slavery? — I hear the phrase most often from Silicon Valley types; they seem to mean "being fervently convinced that the project is a Good Thing", with an implication of either gullibility or comical earnestness but not necessarily self-destruction. —Tamfang (talk) 05:43, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

U.S. Constitutional over-punctuation

I recently commented on some over-punctuation in a piece of the U.S. Constitution, and I’ve come across another one. The 27th Amendment reads:

• No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

What’s with the 3 commas? It reads either like the work of a 5th grader or some ultra-pedant who lost the plot, badly. I’m aware this was first proposed in 1789 but not finally ratified till 1992, but I’m genuinely intrigued as to why they’d put these in, even back in 1789. Did the 1992 people really have to stick with the exact punctuation as originally proposed in 1789? Was there simply no legal way of modernising it without having to re-start the whole 200-odd-year process from scratch? I guess this might come down to a legal issue rather than one of changing punctuation styles, but here’s a good place to start asking. -- JackofOz (talk) 11:19, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I think, the placement of commas in that sentence, is just fine. :-þ —Angr 11:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, my attempts at answering stuff on this ref desk have proven that I know far less about English than I thought I did, but it seems to me that at least the first two commas are fine. The first two are offsetting the clause "varying the compensation ...", which modifies the "no law ... shall take effect" clause. The third comma seems a little more extraneous, I guess.

Fun side note about this particular Amendment: so-called "Cost of Living Increases" don't count. Loophole, anyone? :-) Dgcopter (talk) 20:01, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I read the first 2 commas as implying some parentheticality, which means all the text between the commas could be left out and the overall sense would remain. Do that, and we get "No law shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened". This is clearly not what what the intention is. The laws that the amendment are about are not just any laws but specifically "law[s] varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives". Another way of writing it would be "No law that varies the compensation for ....". In that case, a comma after "law" would be misleading and wrong. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:06, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Over the years punctuation style has simply changed. The 3nd comma is there because there's a change of subject: no A shall X, until B shall Y. Without the comma, people would read it as a compound clause with a single subject. At the time, placement of commas was defined by grammar. Now we figure that if we can follow the text without commas, and there's no ambiguity, then the commas should be left out. Just a change in convention. kwami (talk) 20:56, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Jack, your country, founded by rapacious seafarers, transported malefactors, and the odd cashiered officer of the New South Wales Rum Corps, still retains, the world's number one welfare family, as its hereditary Head of State. So I wouldn't get too Worked up, by the Punctuation or the Capitalization, of a document written in a Far different Time and Place, &c.

More seriously, education was far more limited at the time, I think, and "standards" not nearly so standard as people think (or, perhaps, wish).

There may be something to the theory that once the amendment started down the road, no one wanted to upset the ratification apple cart by carping about a comma. We've managed one amendment roughly every ten years -- including a couple that cancel one another out -- and even then, started with ten right off the bat. It's by no means perfect, but as Benjamin Franklin said (not in so many words), ya dance with who brung ya. --- OtherDave (talk) 22:46, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

It's just contemporary (to 1789) English. Try reading Thomas Paine, or David Hume, or anyone else from there or therabouts in history from anywhere in the Anglophone world and you'll find exactly the same excessive (to modern readers) use of punctuation. In fact, over-punctuation might be the only thing that gives away the age of the works, which is quite surprising considering we're talking about something written two centuries ago. Koolbreez (talk) 19:27, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I see the first two as not merely excessive, but crossing the line into misleading. But if the the vast mass of Americans are not too phased by it, that's the end of that. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I'd hope they're not too fazed by it either. Malcolm XIV (talk) 09:25, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Idiomatic?

"If you (...) are searching a bailout for your crippled financial situation -due to your overuse of your credit card - the only thing I can tell you is that you should have at least a personality disorder."

Is the sentence above correct? I am asking due to the "should have". Does the author meant that any card-shovers searching a bailout HAVE a personality disorder? Nobody 'should' have this. Mr.K. (talk) 16:15, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

In American English, you could read the sentence as saying (in an ungainly fashion) "you better have at least a personality disorder if you want a bailout because you spent too much." If this interpretation is right, it's a windy way of saying "you need to be crazy" or, more likely, "you must be crazy" (with the implication that if you're not actually crazy, people will think you do not deserve the bailout). It's not an idiom; it's the offspring of overheated rhetoric and poor use of the language. --- OtherDave (talk) 21:36, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Searching for a bailout? -- JackofOz (talk) 21:54, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, yes... I missed that completely. You need a "for" in there someplace. (See above, "overheated" and "poor use of the language.") --- OtherDave (talk) 22:47, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, not just "someplace", but specifically where I indicated. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:34, 27 September 2008 (UTC)