Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 May 5

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May 5

Countries ending with -stan

What's with all the countries ending with -stan? (Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) --75.33.219.230 (talk) 02:05, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

You may find the answer you need by taking a look at the -stan article. --Магьосник (talk) 02:26, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's an excellent article on which to land. --- OtherDave (talk) 02:23, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

flowery toast

"At large banquets characteristic of the time, flowery toasts were proposed to the president, to the Republic, and to its democratic ideals. ..."

Somebody please tell me the meaning of "flowery toast". Thank you in advance for your kindness.210.66.171.178 (talk) 02:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)Ann

In this context, flowery means elaborate or grandiloquent, using very pompous language. A flowery toast thus means an elaborate, verbose, or grandiloquent toast. Intelligentsium 02:18, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

If you need an even simpler answer than that: the toast use a great many more words than were necessary. DaHorsesMouth (talk) 03:09, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

And remember that a toast here means a speech, not food. Best, WikiJedits (talk) 14:49, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

It is true that a flowery toast uses more words than necessary, but I think not just any words. The toast would use lots of flattering, positive, and praising words. The toast would also aim to be pretty, like flowers. (However, to our ears it might sound more bombastic than pretty.) Marco polo (talk) 15:03, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for all of your clear answers.210.66.171.178 (talk) 06:07, 6 May 2010 (UTC)Ann

On Wikipedia, we try not to use "puffery" or "peacock terms", which are along the same lines. -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:21, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

http://eupa.ca/

The comment on May 04, 2010 mentions "boat race". Is this some kind of clique? In any case, what is its etymology and meaning?174.3.123.220 (talk) 04:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

See Boat race (game). caknuck _° needs to be running more often 05:03, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Old Latin verses New Latin

Is "Old Latin" and "New Latin" that much different? Is there other versions of Latin? What was the Latin last used? Approximately when were these various versions of Latin in use?--LordGorval (talk) 11:43, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

You can click on the links in the table below to read about the various periods into which Latin usage has been divided. You may want to start with History of Latin. Deor (talk) 12:22, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

"Dost thou know a website whence Shakespearian prose cometh forth from the tongue of our times?"

Does anyone know where there is a good translating program that translates modern english into old english, like Shakespearian? Google Translate does not have that and I couldn't find any websites that actually have such programs. Also, which do you think would be the easiest to learn: Kanji, Katakana, or Hiragana? 64.75.158.193 (talk) 13:10, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Shakespearean English is not Old English. It's Early Modern English. As for katakana, hiragana, and kanji, which one being the easiest to learn would largely depend on you, your learning methods, and your reasons for learning. If you are learning because you want to learn Japanese, I'd do them all, because you'd have to in the end anyway. Generally, though, the path taken would be to learn by concentrating on hiragana, katakana, and kanji in that order (but of course, doing them all to varying degrees at the same time). Some people, though, learn katakana first, because this is used for foreign loanwords in Japanese (as well as writing your own name) and would therefore make it easier for you to read stuff on a menu (in a restaurant serving non-Japanese food). As I say, though, it depends on your reasons for learning. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:15, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Considering what an abysmal job machine translation services translating into Modern English do, I wouldn't trust the results of one designed to translate into either Early Modern English or Old English, even if one exists. +Angr 13:31, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

No, Angr, I think we should be thankful that machine translation services are so bad. In fact, they do a great job - keeping some of us IN a job! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:35, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say I wasn't thankful they do such a bad job translating. After all, translating English for a living is the only thing keeping me from having to (shudder) teach English for a living! +Angr 13:51, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

KageTora -- Katakana and Hiragana both have only about 50 basic characters each, and in modern usage, each kana or kana+modifier combination has one constant phonemic sound value (with very limited exceptions); while with kanji, basic Japanese literacy requires knowing almost 2,000 of them, and many kanji can have multiple radically divergent sound values. I really don't know of any reason why learning kana wouldn't be vastly easier than learning kanji for English speakers (unless they have already learned to read Chinese)... AnonMoos (talk) 16:26, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, AnonMoos, but which part of "concentrating on hiragana, katakana, and kanji in that order" and, in fact, the rest of my post do you find confusing? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:51, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

The part where you said "As for katakana, hiragana, and kanji, which one being the easiest to learn would largely depend on you, your learning methods, and your reasons for learning". I really don't think that's true -- kana is much easier to learn than kanji for ordinary typical English speakers. AnonMoos (talk) 21:15, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, but that single sentence in isolation does not represent the posting as a whole. I then went on to recommend an order that most people generally follow when learning. I decided that it was unnecessary to say that it was easier that way, as it's common sense - why would most people follow a more difficult pattern? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:01, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Dang, I ask a question, then wait for a day for an answer, and I almost get an argument! You guys are awesome! quite entertaining. Anyway, I guess I will take katakana and hiragana lessons first, then learn kanji later, based on your advice, because I do believe that kanji was used in early Japan while the other two are mainly used to add new characters to translate foreign words, and is therefore slightly easier to a degree for english speaking people, correct? 64.75.158.193 (talk) 02:29, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's all pretty complicated. (And take whatever I say with a grain of salt, as I'm not a Japanese speaker, just an enthralled onlooker.) Katakana are mainly used for adopting foreign words, but hiragana are used for native stuff; particularly, hiragana are used for function words and little grammatical bound morphemes—the kanji writing system was adopted from Chinese, but Chinese doesn't have many of these things, so there was no way to write them with kanji—and hiragana are also sometimes used as "pronunciation guides" written above difficult kanji. But in real life it's not so clear-cut, things get mixed around. In particular, with the increase of computers, PDAs, cell phones, etc., kanji are becoming more widely used, since you don't have to remember how to write everything by hand (the computer does most of the work for you); I have heard that older Japanese people sometimes complain that young peoples' writing looks "dark" because it has so many kanji (which generally have more strokes than kana). rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:35, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

(Steadily munches on salt as I read your post) Katakana is for foreign words, hiragana is for simplifying native stuff, and kanji is for just about everything, as it was developed from the Chinese. Okay, so since everything is pretty much mixed up nowadays, it would be best to learn them all anyway. I guess I'll just take the lessons carefully step by step. As for the Shakesparian translator, I might as well do some rough yet reasonable changes by my own without putting random -ths, -ests, thys, thous, etc. all over the place. Any tips on doing that? Thanks guys, or "arigato gozai masu", or maybe even "I bow down to thy noble and trustworthy words, fellow kinsmen". Heh heh =] 64.75.158.195 (talk) 12:10, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Can I recommend just reading a bit of Shakespeare and other fairly contempory texts - the Book of Common Prayer is rather a good one. You'll soon get the hang of it. Alansplodge (talk) 16:05, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

No, it is not true that "kanji was used in early Japan"; at least, not for Japanese. Kanji were used for writing Chinese, and later for something that the Japanese thought was Chinese, but wasn't really; but pure Japanese was written in various kinds of kana - purely phonetic symbols (though they had their origin in kanji). Only later did the bizarrely complicated Japanese system of kanji and okurigana arise. See Japanese writing system#History of the Japanese script. --ColinFine (talk) 23:14, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Alansplodge: I have read many Shakespeare novels and I still can't get the hang of it! Heh... 64.75.158.197 (talk) 07:52, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Shakespeare didn't write novels.--KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 10:48, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Or plays or sonnets either, but we'd better not have a debate about that here. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:52, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Table about Concerns

In this table there are items where I am not sure what they include: Only concerns about things which have already begun, or also concerns about things which are likely to happen later, and which the person in question is afraid of.

On the second page, under the title "End-of-life Concerns", I find the item "Inadequate pain control or concern about it". I assume that here they found it necessary to mention both: inadequate pane control which a person has already experienced, and inadequate pain control which a person may experience later but which the person has not yet experienced. Did I get it right?

Another item is "losing autonomy". There they did not make such a difference. Do you think that here "losing autonomy" refers only to persons who already have begun to loose their autonomy, or do you think that this includes persons who have not yet begun to loose their autonomy but who have reasons to believe that they will begin to loose their autonomy soon?

Then there is the item "Losing control of bodily functions". Do you think this includes any bodily functions which a person wishes to control? For example the bodily functions which enable him to move a cup of tea to his mouth without spilling any tea? Or do you think it is a euphemism for "beginning to become incontinent"?

Thanks in advance. -- Irene1949 (talk) 18:21, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

The last one is generally a euphemism for incontinence. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:52, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

In fact, any reference to "bodily functions", in any context, is most likely to be about the elimination of waste products, rather than, say, the use of the hands to shuffle cards, or even the use of the genitals to have sex. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 20:07, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers to my last question.
There are still my other questions:
Do you think that the item "losing autonomy" includes concerns which are only concerns about the future,
or do you think it is only about losing autonomy which has already begun? -- Irene1949 (talk) 20:17, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

In that table, "losing autonomy" is the same as the other concerns in that section: it refers to losing autonomy more and more as time passes. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:37, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

OR here: I know a gentleman who has Lewy body dementia, and has lost control of almost all of his bodily functions. He is still concerned about what will happen when he loses autonomy, when to most of us his autonomy is already lost. So the answer to your question will probably depend on who you're asking. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:40, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Apparently it’s a bit difficult for me to explain what I want to know. I asked my questions because I want to translate some items of that table into German, and I want my translation to be as exact as possible. My difficulty is about the exact meaning of the combination of “concerns” and “losing”. As, if the losing is in the future, I’d use the German word “Angst” (“fear”), while I’d use other German words if the losing has already begun. Can you help me to see whether it is a losing in the future or a losing which has already begun, or both? -- Irene1949 (talk) 20:39, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

A E I O U

There are, in English, some words that contains all five vowels: a, e, i, o, u (I know that sometimes Y and W are considered vowels too). For example: abstemious, arterious, facetious, anemophilous, sacrilegious (and, if you consider Y, facetiously)... Now, I know that the shortest possible English all-vowels word is eunoia. In French is oiseau (bird), In Italian aiuole (flowerbeds). Do you know their equivalents in other languages (Dutch, Swedish, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Polish, Hungarian...)? --151.51.60.165 (talk) 20:32, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

facetious, abstemious, arsenious, abstentious, bacterious, education, sequoia, duoliteral, arterious, subcontinental, annelidous, armigerous, epuration, inquorate, uvarovite, jalousie, arteriosus, caesious, uncopyrightable, eunoia, eunomia. Kittybrewster ☎ 17:27, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

What about compound words? A sort of famous Finnish one is "Hääyöaie", loosely translated as "wedding night intention". Hää = wedding, yö = night, aie = intent/intention. Worth noting that "y" is always a vowel in Finnish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.220.87.134 (talk) 20:43, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. There's no "u" in that. I just always found it amusing... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.220.87.134 (talk) 20:54, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Wow... In the case of Finnish, the umlauted vowels are counted as indipendent letters? However, I forgot to say that words must have each vowel exactly one time (no repetitions). This [1] page seems to state that in Spanish the words are euforia, aguiero, aquenio, euboica, eubolia and eufonía, a letter more than English/French/Italian. --151.51.60.165 (talk) 21:53, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, in Finnish the umlauted vowels definitely are independent; they have different names, and in the alphabet they come after Z, as in "...XYZÅÄÖ". In speech they are also always pronounced differently from the "un-umlauted" ones. "Å" which is Swedish (our other national language) has a diacritic ring, not an umlaut, so I'm not counting it here. Anyway, I'm not helping... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.220.87.134 (talk) 22:36, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

In Dutch we have "sequoia" and "douarie". No six-letter solutions... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.171.56.13 (talk) 10:22, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Euforia and eufonia are also likely candidates in Polish; I doubt there's anything shorter with all of these five letters. I'm convinced, though, that there is no word in Polish that contains all of Polish vowels letters (a, ą, e, ę, i, o, ó, u, y). — Kpalion^(talk) 14:14, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

In the French alphabet, Y is considered unambiguously a vowel, so oiseau shouldn't do; but the oiseau example is famous in French nonetheless; I suppose Y is rare enough to ignore. Words with all 6 vowels include fr:tutoyaient, fr:rudoyaient, fr:guerroyai, fr:cryptographique, fr:polyinsature. In the Welsh alphabet, W and Y are both always a vowel. Words with all 7 vowels don't include powysmauddelli, which I've just made up. jnestorius^(talk) 17:11, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I bet this game is pretty boring in Ubykh. +Angr 17:18, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Romanian has cuoaie, about which a Romanian friend of mine told me it was an alternative stylisation of literary coaie, "balls" (a slang word for "testicles"). A literary Romanian word with five different vowels is lupoaie. It is given as a synonym of lupoaică, "she-wolf". But please note that Romanian uses two more vowel sounds that are spelt by means of three more letters. /ə/ is spelt as ‹ă› and /ɨ/ is spelt as ‹î› word-initially and word-finally and as ‹â› elsewhere. So, I may not be helping too much. --Магьосник (talk) 17:33, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

eilunaddolwyr is "idolators" in Welsh. Not popular people. jnestorius^(talk) 20:45, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

The word superlativo is an 11-letter word in Italian and Portuguese and Spanish (and Esperanto), but I do not know at this time whether it is superlative in fewness of letters. The letter y is a vowel in only one Spanish word (y), so there can not be a Spanish word with all six Spanish vowels. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:01, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but I believe y represents a vocalic sound when in last position (cf. for instance, Uruguay, etc.), not different from the vocalic sound of i in words like averiguáis. Pallida  Mors 04:27, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Diphthong#Spanish and http://www.tomzap.com/sp_key.html agree with your belief. I am accustomed to thinking of all diphthongs as containing semivowels, which distinguish them from vowels in hiatus. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:32, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I understand your point. You are speaking of vowel in a narrower sense. I prefer to think of vowel as an ortographic sign with a wider domain, pure vocalic and semivocalic sounds [maybe we can safely discard semiconsonantical sounds (i.e. watt)]. Pallida  Mors 04:47, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Spanish orthography#Stress and accentuation says: "The default stress is on the penultimate (next-to-last) syllable on words that end in a vowel, ‹n› or ‹s› and on the final syllable when the word ends in any consonant other than ‹n› or ‹s›. Words that do not follow the default stress have an acute accent over the stressed vowel." "Uruguay" is accented on the last syllable, so "y" is a consonant, is it not? -- Wavelength (talk) 13:54, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, for that purpose. Our dialogue shows that the letter y represents several sounds (at least one consonantical and one semivocalic). However, regarding ortographical accentuation rules, it is considered a consonant, as the DPDD says. Confusing, isn't it? Pallida  Mors 18:37, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is. Anyway, even if we count "y" as a vowel at the end of a Spanish word, I suppose that there are very few Spanish words ending with "y", and there is probably not one which has "a", "e", "i", "o", "u", and "y". I can think of "ay", "hay", "hoy", "soy", "estoy", "doy", "voy", "muy", "rey", "ley", "buey", "grey", "fray", "Paraguay", "Uruguay", "Jujuy", and "Godoy". -- Wavelength (talk) 02:43, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, agreed. I can't think of any meaningful combination in this fashion. Pallida  Mors 15:49, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

For languages like Finnish, Hungarian, or Turkish, we can only rely on compound words because those languages exhibit vowel harmony. And compound words are usually long. --Магьосник (talk) 18:42, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm ready to bet that there's no "real" German word that contains all vowels (aeiouäöü), especially if you count "y" (which is exclusively used, but not commonly counted as vowel and generally occurs only in words of foreign origin). That being said, German is of course known for its possibility to build compound words of almost any source material, so I'm sure you can construct your own personal aeiouäöü(y) word.--Ibn Battuta (talk) 03:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

From leafing through a small one-directional Maori-English dictionary and a small one-directional English-Hawaiian dictionary, I found the Maori word "inaoakenui" ("three days ago") and the Hawaiian word "hookaulike" ("proportion"). However, I suspect that other dictionaries might not be consistent in rendering compounds as single words. - Wavelength (talk) 04:15, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

If the enclitic "que" is permitted, Latin has "symphōniaque" ("and harmony"). -- Wavelength (talk) 04:57, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

If alphabets other than the Latin one count too, I can suggest Greek προ-ευρωπαϊκή. It means "pre-European (feminine)" and consists of 12 letters, including all the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet. I'm not sure if it's the shortest Greek all-vowels word, though. --Магьосник (talk) 08:25, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

The Esperanto word "aerumilo" [2] has eight (8) letters. -- Wavelength (talk) 01:06, 9 May 2010 (UTC)