Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 December 29

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.

December 29

Him/himself

I'm usually reasonably good with the language, but I'm not entirely sure which word to use in instances where sentence subjects are performing actions with objects within certain proximities of themselves. I've made up three examples to illustrate my confusion:

• The pitcher threw the ball behind [him/himself].
• After he finished reading, he placed the book beside [him/himself] on the couch.
• I set the book down next to [me/myself].

For these three, I'm thinking the correct pronouns would be him, him, and me. I'm basing my guesses somewhat on the phrase, "I put the past behind me," as something like, "I put the past behind myself" just sounds absurd.

Any help (and with an intelligible explanation) would be appreciated. I'm pretty sure that once I can figure out which pronoun is correct in instances like these, I'll always remember. --Sgt. R.K. Blue (talk) 09:50, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Reflexive pronoun is the article. The problem seems to be that the person is the subject of the sentence, but is not quite the object - a location near to the person is the object. So I think you're right. Himself would be needed if the person was the object. In David Bowie's lyrics he opted for "I turned myself to face me", which was surely incorrect and should have been "I turned myself to face myself". Similarly you could have "The pitcher threw the ball at himself" and "After he finished reading, he placed the book on himself", with the person being the object. (In all these sentences there are two objects, in fact.)  Card Zero  (talk) 10:47, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

In the first example, if you use "him", that "him" could be referring to any third party mentioned in preceding sentences. In the second example, that would be clumsy because the word "he" was already used in the sentence (it's bad style to use "he/him" repeatedly to refer to more than one person when these words are used close to each other), but still not completely free of ambiguity. That's precisely the purpose of using the reflexive pronoun. Only in the last case, there's no doubt that "I" and "me" is the same person, and "me" could be used instead of "myself" without loss of information.--Itinerant1 (talk) 10:59, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

What's the purpose of ever using "myself"?  Card Zero  (talk) 11:04, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I can't tell you the purpose, but what I can say is that the phrase "By myself" means something, whereas "By me" means something different, if it means anything at all. It's all a matter of context. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:17, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Practical English Usage informs me that "...after prepositions of place, we often use a personal pronoun (me, you etc) if the meaning is clear without using a reflexive. E.g. She took her dog with her (she could hardly take her dog with somebody else), but she was very pleased with herself (she could be pleased with somebody else)." --Itinerant1 (talk) 11:27, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

@ TammyMoet: If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me (Dorothy Parker). -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 18:27, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The proto-indoeuropean reflexive pronoun was entirely lost in English (it survived in Latin and Slavic languages like Polish and Russian). However, because there are times when a reflexive pronoun would be useful to eliminate ambiguity, an ad hoc solution was invented by adding "self" or "own" to the personal pronouns, and even then, there are still problems with ambiguity. To really understand the power of the reflexive pronoun, you would have to know Latin, Polish, Russian or any of the other languages in which it survived. It's kind of difficult to piece together using just English. Any technical explanation using just English would be convoluted and generally unhelpful for ordinary practical purposes. It's like the subjunctive mood in English, which is a difficult concept to grasp or explain for English speakers who don't know German, but easy to figure out for those who do. For practical purposes, you just have to rely on example. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 11:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks for the quick responses. I found the "She took her dog with her" example particularly helpful. --Sgt. R.K. Blue (talk) 17:42, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

And in the American midwest, we would say, "She took her dog with." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:50, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

... but in the rest of the world, we would ask "with what?" Dbfirs 14:17, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

You have to say it the right way, stressing the "with". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:14, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Arabic help

What is Arabic for "Embassy of Qatar in France"? I want to use it in Commons:Category:Qatari Embassy, Paris Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 10:37, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I think سفارة قطر بفرنسا‎ could do. --Theurgist (talk) 18:24, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

It took a bit of googling [1] but it's actually سفارة قطر في فرنسا‎ ; the difference is "fi fransa" and not "bifransa". --Xuxl (talk) 09:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

fī faransā is another (and probably more obvious) way of saying it, but I don't think this means bifaransā is wrong. I chose bi because I noticed there were biʾusturāliyā and bilātfiyā respectively beneath the two photographs at ar:سفارة. Search Google for بفرنسا‎ and "سفارة قطر بفرنسا"‎. Additional comments by Arabic speakers are welcome. --Theurgist (talk) 13:57, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Brněnec

Brněnec is the location of the WWII-era Brünnlitz forced labor camp where Oskar Schindler relocated his German Enamelware factory and with it 1,200 Jewish prisoners he rescued. The Brněnec page lacks indication of the pronunciation that I need for transcription into modern Hebrew. -- Deborahjay (talk) 14:02, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Czech pronunciation: [ˈbr̩.ɲɛ.nɛts], the "R" is syllabic. Here is a convention for Herbaicisation of foreign names; quickly glancing through it I couldn't detect anything about syllabic consonants, but the name Brněnec is very similar to the well-known Brno [ˈbr̩.no], which appears on the Hebrew Wikipedia as ברנו. The -ně- combination is pronounced as if it were spelt -ňe-, and the <ň> in Czech writes /ɲ/, the sound that is spelt <ñ> in Spanish (as in cañón) and <gn> in French and Italian. Probably ברננץ‎ or ברנינץ‎ will do, as far as I can comment on this. --Theurgist (talk) 15:00, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Chinese, Russian, and Turkish help

At the Commons, Commons:Paris, the page says "This page contains a selection of the best illustrations of Paris stored in Commons" What is the phrase in Chinese, Russian, and Turkish? Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 17:41, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

As follows:

• Russian: Эта страница содержит подборку лучших иллюстраций, хранящихся в Париже общин
• Turkish: Bu sayfa Commons saklanan Paris'in en iyi çizimler bir seçme içeriyor
• Chinese: 此页面包含了一个在下议院中选择巴黎最好的插图

Will that do? Rcsprinter (warn) 19:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Yep - thank you so much! WhisperToMe (talk) 19:44, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

As for one other thing, what are the Chinese characters in this picture?

• File:Paris 13e - Olympiades - temple bouddhique 2.JPG

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 19:44, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• 法國潮州會館 (in simplified characters: 法国潮州会馆). rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:19, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Rcsprinter - those are the results of Google Translate, but I as a human being daresay that at least the Russian doesn't make perfect sense. I'd probably revise it as: "Эта страница содержит подборку лучших иллюстраций Парижа, хранящихся на Викискладе." or something like that. --Theurgist (talk) 20:19, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I changed the Russian WhisperToMe (talk) 22:38, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The Chinese machine translation is also incorrect. I'm not a native speaker so I can't give a great translation either, but something like 维基共享资源在此页为您提供巴黎相关的图片 would be better (the translation is not exact but it sounds more natural than a literal translation). The one from Google is not really grammatical. rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:33, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your help WhisperToMe (talk) 06:09, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The Turkish is wrong too. My best guess, with limited Turkish, is "Bu sayfa Commons'dan Paris'in en iyi çizimlerinin seçimi içeriyor." Lesgles (talk) 10:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Language help (Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese)

For the Commons:Paris page What is the phrase "This page contains a selection of the best illustrations of Paris stored in Commons" in Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 20:08, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Italian: "Questa pagina contiene una selezione delle migliori illustrazioni di Parigi contenute in Commons" --151.41.188.184 (talk) 15:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC)