Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 August 24

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August 24

stable

well i look it up on here for the definition and its showing me stables(like barns) im looking for stable like a relationship term... are u stable? hold a job house care emo's type thing///???/// —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.192.190.1 (talk) 03:35, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Look in wiktionary. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 03:37, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

See here for "stable" as an adjective meaning "firmly established" or "unchanging". // BL \\ (talk) 03:45, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

It's worth pointing out that the root for all these words is the same, and that a related set of words from the same root are the variants on "establish". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 15:52, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

And somewhat related also is the word "husband". A married man is presumed to be "stable". A "husband" is literally a "householder". In Spanish, the word for house is "la casa", and to marry is "casar". A married man, presumably stable, is "casado", which we translate as "married", but it's fairly clear that what it really means is "housed". Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 15:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Pokémon

Why can't *pokémon be a Spanish word? --88.77.251.184 (talk) 10:00, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Please stop this nonsense. 80.193.130.5 (talk) 10:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Why can't 'shut up' be a phrase in your language? We are all getting really tired of this. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 11:06, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Why can neither *shut nor *up be a Spanish word? --88.77.251.184 (talk) 11:44, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

C'mon, stop. It is not intelligent, nor funny. --pma (talk) 12:47, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

This person seems to delight in getting editors to bite. Deny him his jollies by simply not responding. Is there any good reason why these questions can't just be removed on sight? -- JackofOz (talk) 13:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

To be fair the reference desk is not a quiz desk - do you know the answers to these questions? You've asked several in the recent future. I would imagine that if you do not know the answer you should be learning how to "do your own research", or doing it yourself.

If you already know the answer then please cease from asking these questions. It is clear that other editors grow tired of these questions. Please respond.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:14, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

'Recent future'? What is that? --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 15:08, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea and I wrote it, I probably meant - see below.83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:30, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I think it is analogous to the 'near past' ;-) -- Q Chris (talk) 15:17, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I am very willing to zap these kinds of questions on sight, unless someone objects. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 15:46, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The letter “k” is rare in Spanish, because it is only used in loanwords. “Pokémon” has a redundant accent on the penultimate syllable, which would be stressed if a trisyllabic Spanish word written without accents ends in “n”. Native Spanish words don't have word-initial “sh”, or word-final “p” or “t”. --88.78.236.1 (talk) 15:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Fine. So what's the * got to do with anything? What's the Spanish for "Nathan Hale"? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 16:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

A * is a standard way in linguistics to mark a word as ungrammatical. JIP | Talk 19:23, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, guys and gals, if you look on the Pokemon Spanish website, you will all find that it is, indeed, called Pokemon in Spanish, just like the Lego question a few days ago. And Jack is right, we should stop rising to the bait, because these questions are silly and very tiring. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 16:06, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The next one of these that appears, I will delete on sight. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 17:41, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems to be called Pokémon, complete with accent, in Spanish. The irony is that the accent in Pokémon isn't there for stress, it's there to prevent English speakers from pronouncing it poke-mon, a mistake that Spanish speakers wouldn't make anyway. A stress accent would probably better be placed on the first syllable. This is actually mentioned at es:Pokémon#Etimología. Why they didn't market it as "Pocket Monsters" I'll never understand. Okay, end of thread. -- BenRG (talk) 10:43, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Ambiguous sentence

aerotrekkers, people who fly unlicensed, open-cockpit planes

Who or what is unlicensed, the pilot or the planes? I tend to think that the planes are unlicensed, however, I think the sentence doesn't states it clearly.

Is the sentence ambiguous or is it just me?

--Quest09 (talk) 11:28, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not a sentence, strictly speaking. Bus stop (talk) 11:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

In some locations, various types of very small flying craft (ultralight) do not require registration and sometimes don't require design certification. This is sometimes refered to as unlicensed planes. To fly these planes the pilots don't need licenses either so the ambiguity reappears. Rmhermen (talk) 13:27, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The wholke sentence, from the NYT, is:

He bought the house in New Mexico as a playground for himself and fellow 
aerotrekkers, people who fly unlicensed, open-cockpit planes. 

--Quest09 (talk) 17:50, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The sentence doesn't make sense if the unlicensed bit refers to the person. So personally, I see no ambiguity. Vimescarrot (talk) 18:00, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's grammatically impossible for "unlicensed" in that sentence to modify "people", unless we're supposed to infer an and-deficient "He bought the house for himself, and for fellow aerotrekkers, and for people who fly unlicensed, and for open-cockpit planes", which is slightly insane. -Silence (talk) 18:39, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The comma between "unlicensed" + "open-cockpit" is merely to separate adjacent adjectives -- it does not serve to make "people who fly unlicensed" into a subordinate clause. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 18:59, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

If you want ambiguous, my dad called me the other day to tell me, "Uncle Benny died...Mom told you...I think." So I asked him if he was unsure that Uncle Benny died. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 19:01, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

You're ending the dependent clause too soon. Clauses don't end at the next comma; they can contain additional commas themselves. The second comma in the sentence is a "Between adjectives" comma, not a "Separation of clauses"/"Parenthetical phrases" comma. Read it like:

He bought the house in New Mexico as a playground for himself and fellow 
aerotrekkers, (people who fly unlicensed, open-cockpit planes).

128.104.112.102 (talk) 22:57, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Afrikaans given names

Do Afrikaans given names diverge from Dutch ones? I mean, is it usual for Afrikaans speakers to have an Afrikaans first name (if existing) instead of a Dutch one? For example, are Dutch names like Lodewijk, Matthijs, Martijn conveyed as Lodewyk, Matthys, Martyn? Or Balthazar and Jozef as Balthasar and Josef? I'd like to find some references. --151.51.42.132 (talk) 21:25, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

The names that you mention don't seem to be very popular among Afrikaans speakers, based on some googling. While some common Afrikaans names are identical to Dutch ones, it doesn't look as if those include names whose spelling would need to change to match Afrikaans orthography. While the list of common Afrikaans names has some overlap with common Dutch names, the two lists are not identical, and there seem to be a number of uniquely or predominantly Afrikaans names. Here is a discussion of Afrikaans names from Yahoo Answers. Marco polo (talk) 13:25, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The protagonist of District 9 is an Afrikaaner named Wicus van der Merwe. Is Wicus a common name in the Netherlands? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 18:28, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Van der Merwe sounds quite Dutch. Merwe comes from the Nieuwe_Merwede, a river in the Netherlands. Never heard of Wicus though, couldn't find much people called Wicus anywhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sealedinskin (talk • contribs) 08:28, 26 August 2009 (UTC)