Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 May 9

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May 9

Translate that phrase

Esselamun aleykum ve rahmetullahi ve berekatuhu. What does it mean? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 02:56, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you all. --Omidinist (talk) 05:07, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it Turkish? +Angr 05:19, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks like Arabic as pronounced in some other language... AnonMoos (talk) 06:56, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Definitely not arabic due to the 'v' sound/letter, maybe Farsi--rocketrye12 ^{talk/contribs} 15:12, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly what I meant by "as pronounced in some other language"... AnonMoos (talk) 20:41, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

It's Arabic and it comes at the end of all five daily prayers of Muslims. 'Ve' (meaning 'and') between two words can be read like 'o'. --Omidinist (talk) 15:23, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

See salah. In proper Arabic script it would be السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته. Gabbe (talk) 16:28, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

There are thousands of different manners to transliterate Arabic into Latin script, but no 'true' version (although there are proposals for scientific and consequent transliteration, which are not used in day-to-day affairs by anyone). Arabic has only three vowels, and vowel sounds can be transliterated into various different Latin vowels. --Soman (talk) 21:05, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

What does Не атрымалася надзейна выявіць зыходны мова mean

68.248.235.144 (talk) 03:03, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The results of my Google search for that exact wording indicate that it is in the Belarusian language, which is spoken by some Wikipedians.

-- Wavelength (talk) 03:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) It is Belarusian for "Could not reliably detect source language" - which is an error produced by the detect language option in Google translate (when I did this, Google translate claimed to have detected Belorussian and is able to translate fragments such as "мова" = "language" and "выявіць зыходны" = "identify source", so I don't suspect that Google failed me here!) Astronaut (talk) 03:29, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Strange language found on shirt

This was written on a shirt at the Chinese Mall in Johannesburg:

Siese ofeiochos hiogse chsoiel;e fcoseihg tiosen

I don't know what language it is, or whether it's just random letters. Does anyone here know better? --Slashme (talk) 17:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks a bit random to me (especially the ";"), but you never know. Rimush (talk) 18:17, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

It seems unlikely to me that six polysyllabic and consonant-laden words in any natural language would be formed solely from the letters c e f g h i l n o s t, unless it was some specially-constructed tongue-twister... AnonMoos (talk) 20:39, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Could it be one of the official languages in South Africa? Many of the languages in use in South Africa use sounds such click consonants which are sometimes represented on paper by English punctuation marks (though I don't know specifically if the semi-colon is used in this way). Astronaut (talk) 04:44, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It's definitely not a South African language. I can speak isiXhosa to an extent, so I can recognize Bantu languages easily; I see various Sotho types of languages all the time, so even though I can't speak them I can recognize them as well. I can also tell the Khoi and San languages at a glance: they have rather characteristic quirky orthography involving lots of slashes and exclamation points to denote clicks of various kinds. --Slashme (talk) 09:21, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

You say you saw it at a Chinese store? It's likely to be gibberish. Latin script is considered "cool" and it's not uncommon for people to wear shirts with gibberish on it just because it's in an exotic script. (Westerners do the same thing with Chinese characters.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:46, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

That had crossed my mind, Rjanag, but considering this store is in South Africa and not China or Taiwan, it's more likely to be catering to native South Africans than to Chinese people, even tourists. I can agree though that 25 years ago or so (when I was in China) I wouldn't have been too surprised to see this at a cheap roadside stall in Tianjin. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 08:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

The lack of a space after the ; might be a typo, so we shouldn't assume it's supposed to be a letter. There may be other typos as well, making lang ID (if it's not spurious) difficult. That said, sequences like init. chs, fc, hg are quite rare. — kwami (talk) 08:15, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm almost convinced that it's gibberish by now! Thanks, guys. --Slashme (talk) 09:21, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

One other possibility: There is a graphic joke that looks like a foreign phrase on a T-shirt. When you lift the shirt up, bringing the bottom half of the letters on the bottom up to the top half of the letters on the top line, it makes an obscene phrase in English. Kind of like the Mad Magazine tri-fold graphic jokes on the inside back covers (in the 60s at least -- don't know if those or the magazine even still exists). DavidH (talk) 20:25, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Mad Fold-in... AnonMoos (talk) 23:48, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Seen, unseen, heard, unheard

Compare:

1a. The beautiful song went unheard.

2a. The beautiful song was heard.

3a. The beautiful painting went unseen.

4a. The beautiful painting was seen.

With:

1b. The unheard song was beautiful.

2b. The heard song was beautiful.

3b. The unseen painting was beautiful.

4b. The seen painting was beautiful.

To this native English speaker's ear, all of the "a" items are completely natural. Items 1b and 3b are likewise. 2b, however, sounds a bit odd, and 4b sounds ill-formed or just wrong. Why is this? --Atemperman (talk) 18:02, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Because "heard" and "seen" are rarely used as adjectives in front of a noun? Gabbe (talk) 18:10, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

To clarify what I meant, in 2a and 4a the adjectives "heard" and "seen" are used predicatively, whereas in 2b and 4b they are used attributively. See adjective. Gabbe (talk) 18:14, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Sure, but it seems that all you're saying is that they sound odd because they are rare, which sounds a bit tautological. Why aren't "heard" and "seen" used attributively? Especially since "unheard" and "unseen" are, along with words like "perceived" and "observed"? Is this some sort of accident of what happens to be idiomatic? Why does it feel not just unusual but wrong to say, "the seen painting was beautiful"?--Atemperman (talk) 05:03, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I would imagine it's because "seen" doesn't help describe the painting in any way. It doesn't identify the see-er (whereas "the painting that Joe saw" does, and sounds fine; and "the unseen painting" specifically says that there is no see-er), nor does it describe the state of the painting (since see is not a causative verb it doesn't change the state of the painting; compare to "the broken vase"). So it doesn't add anything to the description, which is what makes it sound weird. In the rare cases where it does add something to the description (I've read multiple psychology/cognitive science articles where they might mention something about "heard words" or "seen items" in the context of an experiment), it doesn't sound weird. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:25, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's not that they are wrong, rather that they carry very little meaning, so why would anyone bother to say "heard song" or "seen painting"? Dbfirs 14:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)