Language desk
< August 5	<< Jul \| August \| Sep >>	August 7 >

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.

August 6

Tournament Seeding

What is the history of the word "seed" as in ranking competitors in a tournament?---- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.138.90.209 (talk) 00:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A seed is how you start something off (like the seed of a plant or a seed crystal), when you seed the draw of a tournament you start it off by putting the top ranked people in and then add the rest in at random. --Tango (talk) 00:52, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)The answer is implied by my old Webster's, in reference to "seeding" as a synonym for "sowing", i.e. "planting", in such a way as to spread out the presumed best teams so that they won't meet in early rounds of play. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 00:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The implication also is that it starts with the verb form, "seeding", "sowing", "planting", "arranging", etc. and by back-reference the noun of course becomes a "seed". In effect, each spot on the tournament chart is a "seed" being "planted" in the tournament. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 00:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Recipe

Why are recipe names often capitalised? Jc iindyysgvxc (talk) 06:10, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You mean like Peach Melba? Because proper nouns are usually capitalized in English. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And how do you know a word is a proper noun? That's simple: it's capitalized, of course! It's the same with days of the week, months, plant and animal species, etc. Proper nouns "representing unique entities" (as the Wikipedia article says)? Yeah, right. — Kpalion^(talk) 08:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Which doesn't explain "summer", "fall", "winter", "spring". :) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 08:26, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It does! The names of seasons of the year are not capitalized because they're commons nouns. And you can tell they're common nouns because they're not capitalized. It gets tricky when you look at other languages though. If you ask someone who speaks French, Russian or Polish, for instance, if months or days of the week are proper or common nouns, they'll say they're commons nouns. Why? They'll probably tell you it's because these words don't "represent unique entities"; but it's really just because they're not capitalized. — Kpalion^(talk) 08:33, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This has been the most enlightening thread I have ever seen. And I mean that non-snarky, because i had an epiphany, and you are my god. Await while I worship you as they do zeus. :) --M^ask? 09:12, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Forget the worship, just make a donation to our charity, the Lap of Heaven. (That's the name of our Swiss bank). Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 09:41, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Mask. I started to think about it after I posted a similar question, about capitalizing the names of species, on the Science desk a long time ago. I never understood how a come, say, "wolf" is a common noun, but "Eurasian Grey Wolf" is a proper noun. If I had a pet wolf and named it Big Bad Wolf, that would be a proper noun, alright, as it would refer to a unique individual animal. But the name of an entire species? The only answer is that the common/proper noun distinction, in English at least, is just a convention with no logical explanation. — Kpalion^(talk) 12:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree: it is logical to capitalize a species name. The species as a whole (as distinguished from some individual member of the species) is a unique entity--it's a Eurasian gray wolf, but the Eurasian Grey Wolf. 71.243.1.167 (talk) 13:55, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think English used to be more like German (one of its ancestors) with all nouns capitalized. Somewhere along the way we dropped the caps except on proper nouns. There is a game called "baseball". There is a type of baseball called the major leagues. And there is an organization whose title is Major League Baseball. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 14:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How about this: there is a sunday every week, but there was only one historic Bloody Sunday (well, actually there was about a dozen of them). There is an october every year, but there was only one historic Polish October. There are millions of spaniards in the world, but only one country call Spain. Except that it's not how it works. I think it would be fair to says that in English, proper nouns (nouns referring to unique entities) are always capitalized; but additionally, some common nouns are, by convention, capitalized as well. The problem is that most people think that if a word is capitalized, then it must be a proper noun. The answer to the original question shouldn't be "recipe names are capitalized because they're proper nouns", but "recipe names are capitalized because that's how we write them". — Kpalion^(talk) 15:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) The EU has a styleguide on writing in British English [1] which in summary says:

capitalise specific references
lowercase general references
there are exceptions to the rule (some of which are detailed)

The latter statement pretty much sums it up. Most newspapers have their own styleguide (I was going to post the BBC's styleguide which again is slanted towards British conventions but it seems dated and is a mess to read). Wikipedia has its own as well. It, as Kpalion points out, comes down to what is convention. -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 15:18, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And to make the point explicit, in some cases not everyone agrees on the convention to be used. Some people capitalize Summer; some say that in "European gray wolf" only the first word should be capitalized. I'd say that recipe titles are in the same category as that wolf; they can go either way. Of course there's even more variation when you compare different languages; as noted, German capitalizes all nouns, whereas in French the names of languages and the days of the week are uncapitalized (so a Frenchman is a "Français" but his language is "français"). And still other languages don't even have the concept of capital letters. --Anonymous, 00:08 UTC, August 8, 2009.

List of Popes

I'm searching for a list of Popes in Rhaeto-Romance languages: Romansh, Ladin and Friulian. I'd like also to find a Maltese one. I tried to find them by myself but I only found some maltese names, but never a complete list. --151.51.34.166 (talk) 11:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Do you speak those languages yourself? If so, then I think it shouldn't be too hard to translate them from la:Index paparum. Most of the popes' names are very common and the "translations" should be reasonably close to Latin. If that doesn't work, I would consider writing to the Vatican or to the Catholic churches in each of the regions you're interested in. — Sebastian 20:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Cia-Cia writing system

Despite of technical difficulties, (e.g., buying computer keyboards with Hangul keycaps, inexperienced users do need them), is the Hangul alphabet system good for any language other than Korean?

The Hangul alphabet system was specially created for the Korean language. It has 14 consonants and 10 vowels. They form block characters vertically and horizontally. So they do not act like Latin-based writing systems where alphabets form a line. If a language's use of consonants and vowels differ from Korean significantly. Say, a language may use 24 alphabets but it has 5 vowels and 19 consonants. In this case, using Hangul as its writing system may demand the formation of illegal blocks if you're using unmodified Korean computers. -- Toytoy (talk) 12:13, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine Hangul can be adapted for use with other languages, just as the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets frequently are. The Cia-Cia may not use all the characters in exactly the same way as they're used in Korean, and may need to introduce some new characters or discard some unneeded ones, but that doesn't mean Hangul is unsuited for use in other languages. +An gr 13:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It could be adapted quite easily to a language with a similar syllabic structure and a similar or lesser number of phonemes. The Roman alphabet was adapted to some very ill-suited languages, such as Irish, Polish and English - Polish and Irish distinguish too many consonants, and English has too many vowels - but the adaptation held.

In this case, I think it's an adaptation that could hold quite well, assuming that the language itself survives. Hangul is a well constructed system. Steewi (talk) 01:19, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Adaption is always possible. It just takes money. If my language has too many vowels, I can easily invent acute y, grave y, umlaut y, whatever y, whatever a, whatever e ... to help me with spelling. Since the Latin alphabets have been used globally for thousands of years, there are so many established accented Latin alphabets for me to choose from. It is very unlikely that I need to invent a new alphabet for my own use (see the Vietnamese alphabets).

It is certainly not the case for a small and remote tribe to invent a new alphabet. If, for whatever reason, I need to invent a new Hangul-compatible alphabet or accent mark, I have to update most major computer systems (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, hand-held devices ...) and fonts. If I wish to modernize my language, I have to spend serious money to update today's Korean systems.

Otherwise, I may have to invent a set of complex and difficult context-determined pronounciation rules. -- Toytoy (talk) 02:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, I would imagine that adding lots of diacritics could slow down writing speed. Mo-Al (talk) 17:16, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rusty Latin

Ok, my high school latin is failing me. My old high school team used to use a latin phrase that meant "Drinkin', dinkin' and dukin'. What is that phrase? Secondly, now that we have all aged, I think a more appropriate motto might be "Poppin', breakin' and fartin'". How would I say that in Latin?

67.193.179.241 (talk) 12:14, 6 August 2009 (UTC) Rana[reply]

It would help to know what those words are supposed to mean in English first. What are dinking and duking? Adam Bishop (talk) 12:49, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect dinking is fucking and duking is fighting, but I'll wait for confirmation. However, the OP actually asked how to say "Poppin', breakin' and fartin'" in Latin. It isn't easy to translate, quite apart from the issue of vocabulary (I assume popping is in reference to arthritic joints and breaking is in reference to osteoporotic hips?), because Latin doesn't use present participles in the same way as English does. It would probably be more idiomatic to translate them with 1st person plural present tense verbs. +An gr 12:57, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks guys, Angr is correct. And yes, my hip hopping days have long since past. 67.193.179.241 (talk) 14:20, 6 August 2009 (UTC) Rana[reply]

Heh, I was thinking "popping" and "breaking" were hip-hop dance moves, but I don't know about farting! Adam Bishop (talk) 12:59, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Imbibo, concubitus, quod bellator. (I used an online translator for, "Drinking, copulating, and fighting," for English to Latin.) Bus stop (talk) 13:04, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, your online translator is about as good as their reputation. Imbibo is a first person singular verb (I drink), concubitus is either a noun or a past participle, and quod bellator seems to be an ungrammatical juxtaposition of two words. +An gr 14:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A nonsensical online translator, quite appropriate for its use, though. I'd suggest to try it for the other sentence too. --pma (talk) 12:57, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A literal translation of "drinking, fucking, and fighting" would be something like "potantes, futuentes, et pugnantes" (or, depending on one's taste, the more mellifluous "potantes, pedicantes, et pugnantes"). To change it to the singular, replace each "-ntes" with "-ns". For the second phrase you mentioned, "findentes, frangentes, et pedentes" could work. You might also consider changing the present participles into infinitives, which is probably the most common way in Latin to express "verbing". -Silence (talk) 00:39, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To further clarify, the Latin present participle refers to people who do the activities of the verbs, and not to the verb actions in the abstract. The English "-ing" form actually corresponds to the Latin present participle in a relatively small number of cases (mainly adjectival uses, such as "fighting men" etc.). "Pugnantes" would be more often be translated into English as "fighters" than as "fighting". To translate "fighting" in the abstract (to refer to the activity in general, rather than specifically to a person who fights), the infinitive "pugnare", treated as a neuter nominative singular noun, would be more appropriate, as mentioned... AnonMoos (talk) 09:15, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

question

hi i have some question what's the meaning of this sentences 1-if you know say a you a mi target 2-get wit it my beat if you set wit it 3-i'm nah come good with the approach at all 4-sean paul a di man you fi call —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shahzade (talk • contribs) 16:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, they aren't in English as I was taught it. You need to find someone that speaks whatever strange dialect that is. Some context might help, though. --Tango (talk) 20:03, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strangs dialect? They're lyrics. we even have an article on Sean Paul, mentioned. --M^ask? 20:07, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They're song lyrics for Sean Paul's "So Fine." Sounds like Jamaican patois. Exploding Boy (talk) 20:15, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rose Bay Willow Herb

How did this weed get such a long name? Referred to in Wikipedia by the more compact Rosebay Willowherb. Most British weeds have single-word names like daisy, nettle, yarrow, and so on. 92.26.30.9 (talk) 23:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, in my experience most weeds with short names typically have some sort of usefulness, and this one doesn't have many traditional European uses. Hopefully someone can tell us the full etymology, but until then my guess is that people wanted to distinguish it from the other willowherbs, and maybe it resembled Oleander in some superficial way. Oleander has rose-like flowers and resembles Bay Laurel, so that's probably where that name came from. These are just educated guesses, though, I really have no idea. You might also ask on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants if you don't get a better answer here. Indeterminate (talk) 11:22, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 August 6

Contents