Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 August 2

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August 2

French construction: "le (singular noun) est des plus (plural adjective)"

In a French book I'm reading (it's a phonetic description of a variety of Munster Irish, written by Marie-Louise Sjoestedt in 1931), I've encountered a construction I'm not familiar with:

Le/la X est des plus Y

where X is a singular noun and Y is a plural adjective. Examples:

Ce genre d'opposition est des plus répandus en morphologie.

La vélarisation est des plus nettes.

What does this mean? Is it just "X is very Y"? +Angr 13:51, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It means "among", or as we would also say in English, "one of". ("Velarization is among the clearest/one of the clearest"). Adam Bishop (talk) 14:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I thought about that for the first example ("This type of opposition is among/one of the most widespread in morphology"), but it doesn't make much sense in the second example, because velarization isn't being compared within any context: "Velarization is among/one of the clearest" - one of the clearest whats? +Angr 14:20, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I don't know, I assumed there was a previous sentence to give it some context! What comes before it? Adam Bishop (talk) 15:14, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It looks like it's "very" then (maybe also "quite" or "rather"?). This Nouvelle Grammaire Française has examples with "des plus (plural adjective)" and "des plus (singular adjective)". ---Sluzzelin talk 15:44, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, according to that, when it means "very" the adjective should be in the singular (La situation était des plus embarassante), but maybe Sjoestedt didn't know that (the singular and plural are homophonous in these examples anyway). +Angr 16:47, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I found this: http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/plus (a very nice website for rare words and grammatical constructions). It says (among others):

− Des plus + adj., littér., superl. abs. Parmi les plus, très.

As an example, "Un personnage secondaire et des plus effacés" is given. So the adjective should be plural (no matter whether the subject is singular or not), and it means "very Y" indeed (literally: "of the most Y"). Markussep ^Talk 15:11, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Likewise, in English, the universal set is plural, regardless of the grammatical number of the subset. For example, in "one of the most famous buildings" and "some of the most famous buildings", "buildings" is plural because there is a set of famous buildings, and particular mention is being made of "one" of them and "some" of them (not "one" of "it" and "some" of "it").—Wavelength (talk) 22:45, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Some French authors use the singular after "des plus", while others prefer the plural. It is a choice. In the sentence "La situation était des plus embarrassante" (the situation was most embarassing), the adjective "embarassante" agrees in gender and in number with the noun "la situation". However, "des plus embarassantes" would have been correct too. In any case, a plural noun is followed by a plural adjective. Maurice Grevisse suggests a preference for the singular in short sentences like "Lire est des plus agréable" (reading is very pleasant). However, apart from literary works, the plural is increasingly used today. --Keguligh (talk) 23:00, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Homophonic Translation

I'm trying to find some examples of identical sequences of letters that can be red in different languages. The following is a famous example by Elena Addomine (from Oplepo, the Italian version of Oulipo):

• Italian: Lo vedi, paga in amore, tremo rapita. Ma fine porterò fatale.
• English: Love dip, again a more tremor: a pit, a... 'm a fine porter of a tale!

Do you have any other example, in any other pair of languages? --151.51.156.20 (talk) 15:48, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Some people have devised texts that can be read in both Latin and Italian, with exactly the same word boundaries and punctuation... AnonMoos (talk) 16:26, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

My hand is warm is spelled the same and means the same in English and Afrikaans. +Angr 16:52, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't find a German/English one online, so I tried to make one up, and it doesn't make sense either in English or in German, but here goes anyway ...

• German: "Theorien tun der Ananas gut." (Theories do the pineapple good.)
• English: "The Orient, under a nana's gut."

By the way, wouldn't this be closer to a "homographic translation" (we do have an article on homophonic translation with a nice French version of Humpty Dumpty, but I couldn't find one on what 151.51 is seeking). ---Sluzzelin talk 17:20, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Not quite what you asked for, but IIRC, the phrase "Good butter, good cheese, good in English, Good in Friese" apparently has both the same words and the same meaning in English and Friesian. Alansplodge (talk) 19:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

IIRC, those two sentences sound very similar in English and Frisian, but are not spelled the same. +Angr 20:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Translate a single German sentence, please

Could the following please be translated?

"Feodosiy Petsyna war von 1994 bis 2006 Erzbischof von Drohobych und Sambir im Kiewer Patriarchat und seit 2007 der Ukrainisch Autokephalen Orthodoxen Kirche."

I've just imported it from de:Feodosiy Petsyna, a two-sentence stub, to User:RFD/Feodosiy Petsyna. The meaning of the article's first sentence was obvious to me, even though I don't speak German, but I can't properly understand this second sentence. Nyttend (talk) 19:17, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Feodosiy Petsyna was from 1994 to 2006 Archbishop of Drohobych and Sambir in the Patriarchate of Kiev and since 2007 of the Ukrainian autocephalous Orthodox Church. ("Autocephalous" is a designation for a non-metropolitan seat Subordinate Archdiocese, according to Google Translate.) Looie496 (talk) 19:27, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

See Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church Canonical. Looie496 (talk) 19:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

... and Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate and Deaths on the 23d of July, 2010. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:36, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, my search somehow missed Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Looie496 (talk) 19:46, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick help! Article is now in mainspace. Nyttend (talk) 19:48, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for doing this-RFD (talk) 21:13, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Latin phrase translation

What would be the best rendering in English of "Obnoxiosa sed non ob noxiosa"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.106.143 (talk) 21:05, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

"Obedient, but not to a fault." LANTZY^TALK 21:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.106.143 (talk) 21:13, 2 August 2010 (UTC)