Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 February 16

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February 16

...[Why are ships sometimes referred to as "she"?]

Why are ships sometimes referred to as "she"? JCI (talk) 00:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The use of "she" in such situations dates back to the 14th C, possibly from grammatically feminine French words. The habit stuck, possibly because ships (and cars, cannons, carriages) are things men become attached to. Also used for abstract ideas (such as countries). We've discussed this before on the ref desk: the discussions here and here are quite helpful. Gwinva (talk) 01:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Writing Amharic by hand

Amharic is written using the Ge'ez alphabet. There are plenty of resources online and in print to teach someone to read this alphabet, but I'm struggling to find resources for writing it. I'm not interested in calligraphic writing, just normal handwriting. Does anyone know of print or web materials teaching how to write in Ge'ez script? Thanks! Diacritic (talk) 08:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm betraying some ignorance I'm not aware of here (a double ignorance, if you will!), but since you know the alphabet -- it's right there in the Ge'ez alphabet article -- surely you know how to write it? I mean, you have the shape of the letters right there; duplicating them with a pen and paper shouldn't be that hard, right? (Of course, in order to really write the language, you'd also have to know it, but that doesn't seem to be what you're asking about.) Or am I missing something obvious here? -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:45, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Have you changed your name to Captain Rumsfeld, by any chance? :) -- JackofOz (talk) 16:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the questioner wants to know the correct habits to develop in handwriting, as for example with the stroke order (see a Chinese parallel). These physical arm and hand skills are normally taught when children learn how to form the letters or symbols. BrainyBabe (talk) 14:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Hand-written letters often have quite different shapes from printed letters. Consider the Latin alphabet for a start, there is no way you could learn how to write this just by staring here. — Emil J. 14:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Right, and if the original poster was interested in calligraphy, for example, I wouldn't have asked. But in my experience, people's handwriting can vary widely anyway, and it's not unusual for people to use surprisingly different motions or strokes to write fairly similar-looking letters. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 15:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

But you develop those habits later. When you are 4 or 5 or however old, you learn to form the letters one "proper" way. And when you are much older and you want to learn a completely different alphabet, it's not helpful, and sometimes may be impossible, to simply try and copy what you see. Rather than Chinese, I think this would be more analogous to other Semitic alphabets like Hebrew or Arabic - when I tried to learn how to write Arabic on my own, for some letters I had no idea where to even begin writing them. Now, after saying all that, there doesn't appear to be anywhere online where you can learn how to write Ge'ez (or Amharic). There are some textbooks - for Amharic there is one by Wolf Leslau, and for Ge'ez there is Introduction to Classical Ethiopic by Thomas Lambdin - but I don't know if they are the kind that will show you how to form the letters. Adam Bishop (talk) 17:33, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

This is right. I once saw a collection of little short stories written by primary school children, of about age 7 to 8. At first I was surprised to see that every single one of the children had identical handwriting. But then I realised that they're new to this writing business altogether, and are starting from a "safe" way they were taught before getting used to it and building their own style. JIP | Talk 17:46, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not certain (my copy's in a box somewhere while my spare room's being decorated) but I think that the Routledge Colloquial Amharic book has a handwriting table in the first section. (I know their Georgian book does, but I can't remember for sure about the Amharic) --ColinFine (talk) 19:34, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem, as I see it, is that with just one sample style you don't know what's essential and what's not. I've seen homemade Hebrew fonts that gave far too much emphasis to the equivalent of serifs. I've seen Cirth fonts, based on Tolkien's table, that treat the double dots (separating groups of runes) as part of an adjacent rune, and/or treat the variant forms (shown side by side) as parts of one character. (Curiously, in File:Cirth.png three of the runes that have variant forms are shown as two identical glyphs.) —Tamfang (talk) 23:30, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

These links may be helpful.

• Amharic handwriting (에티오피아어 글자 쓰기)
• »Amharic Road to Ethiopia - Camino a Etiopia: The first bilingual Ethiopian adoption blog
• http://www.africanlanguage.com/shop/index.html?target=p_10.html&lang=en-us

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedians by language has a link to Category:User am.

-- Wavelength (talk) 21:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

revision

hello! could someone revise the article Brazilian art and fix its language? i wrote it but i am not fluent in english, so it must be filled with language mistakes. thanks in advance! Ricardofrantz (talk) 19:19, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm on it, but this is not the best place to ask this. You can ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject League of Copyeditors, for future reference, but they have a backlog. --Milkbreath (talk) 19:48, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

It looks quite good actually (as far as a non-art expert can tell). The only question I have is, did you mean "morbidity and death" or "mortality and death"? Clarityfiend (talk) 21:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the art in question, but morbidity refers to the prevalence of disease, rather than the incidence of death (which would be "mortality," as in the medical term morbidity and mortality). So "morbidity" might well be appropriate here. --- OtherDave (talk) 01:50, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

It didn't need much work. I'm so in awe of these foreign people who can do English so well. --Milkbreath (talk) 02:06, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

hello guys! thank you very much for helping me with Brazilian art! It sounds much better and got a nice and spirited charm in its new real English shape hehehe! warm regards! Ricardofrantz (talk) 10:42, 17 February 2009 (UTC) PS: morbidness (the current form) seems perfect! By the way, i'll try the League of Copyeditors for the next time, but your quick response and good job makes me rely on you, if possible...