Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 July 31

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July 31

Dick

How can it be a name and an insult? 88.8.79.148 (talk) 14:12, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

The derogative implication devolves from association with Dick Cheney ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:30, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

On a slightly more serious note, its usage as a name came first, and then, presumably for taboo reasons or similar, the name came to also be used for the male genitalia, which in turn came to be used as an insult. Accordingly, the word 'dick', now meaning the male genitalia, was used as an insult. The usage as a name, however, has continued. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 15:26, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

There are lots of English words that have both a G-rated and an X-rated connotation. George Carlin's famous routine about 7 words you can't say on TV were about words that have only a vulgar connotation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:12, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Carlin does suggest a non-vulgar connotation in this instance: "Tits doesn't even belong on the list. That is such a friendly sounding word. It sounds like a nickname, right? 'Hey, Tits, come here, man. Hey Tits, meet Toots. Toots, Tits. Tits, Toots.'" Bus stop (talk) 17:51, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

And one or two of his forbidden words are now heard on over-the-air TV from time to time. Anmd of course all of them are said frequently on pay cable such as HBO. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:27, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

If the list is supposed to only contain words that have no "clean" meaning then "tits" is definitely a mistake. I have heard it used on many occasions on wildlife programs, I can just picture Bill Oddie looiking through his binoculars and saying "Just look at those great tits". -- Q Chris (talk) 08:38, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Carlin actually has another, more relevant, section on "dual use words" IE You can say that a batter has three balls and two strikes but you can't say the pitcher hurt his balls on that play, you can prick your finger, but you can't, ever, finger your prick on TV. HominidMachinae (talk) 20:28, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

In any case "Tits" fails the "only a vulgar connotation" test because Tit/s is, outside the USA (which still I understand favours the older version ""Titmouse/mice"), the common form of the name of various families of small bird.

As that last link mentions, tit with reference to the birds derives from a germanic word meaning "small" (as opposed to the mammalian derivation from "teat"). Similarly the German dick means "thick" or "fat": I have sometimes wondered if the insult "dickhead" has this origin ("thick-head") rather than literally meaning "penis-head". According to the Collins English Dictionary (1979) "dick" = "penis" is a 16th-century adoption from "Dick" the popular contraction of "Richard", which had already come to signify a male person in general (as in "Tom, Dick and Harry"). Annoyingly, my dead-tree edition of the OED omits any reference to the vulgarity.

It should also be borne in mind that in former centuries, references to the sexual organs were not considered to be as vulgar as they are today, hence for example many Shakespearian references and jokes. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.38 (talk) 20:16, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

How is "Dick" a contraction of "Richard"? Bus stop (talk) 20:25, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I guess this sheds some light. Bus stop (talk) 20:31, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

And Etymonline says 'Dick' is a rhyming nickname for 'Rick', which is a nickname for 'Richard'. From 1891 it was British Army slang for 'penis'. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:42, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

There are several English names where the nickname has its initial letter replaced or added-to with a stronger consonant: Richard -> Rick -> Dick / Robert -> Rob -> Bob / William -> Will -> Bill / Edward -> Ed -> Ted or Ned / Mary -> Molly -> Polly / Margaret -> Meg -> Peg / and maybe a few others. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:40, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Further to one of the above comments, one of my favorite wiki articles is about Great Tits. Vespine (talk) 06:15, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Moving on from that, did the US name "chickadee", for the same group of birds, arise because "tit" (for "titmouse") was explicitly seen as vulgar and unmentionable at some point, or because different colloquial names for the birds simply became established among people on different continents for other reasons? Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:07, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

to sail is everything

I did a Google search for the following statement:

"I read once that sailors of old used to cry out 'To sail is everything; to live is not', when they were heading out into particularly choppy waters. I know it sounds a bit grim but I love the idea of taking a chance on your passion rather than living your whole life 'safe'."

(Actually my Google search was for only part of the above statement because Google seems to allow a maximum of 32 words.)

Is the sub-quote, "To sail is everything; to live is not", of any renown? Anybody ever heard of it before, or can suggest an origin? Bus stop (talk) 17:06, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Acording to this source Plutarch attributes to Pompey the words "To sail is necessary; to live is not." Another work gives the alternative translation "One does not need to live. One needs to navigate", and says the cities of the Hanseatic League used the quotation as their motto. --Antiquary (talk) 18:52, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Nice. It shows, to me, a tremendous need to keep ships moving on the sea despite bad weather. Thanks. Bus stop (talk) 19:10, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

The Latin would be navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse, if I remember correctly. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:18, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Capital letters

Why do some languages, such as English, have capital letters at the start of sentences while others, such as Japanese, don't have any at all? Pascal (talk) 18:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Let me ask the reverse: "What forces would result in all written languages in the world, including those with different origins, using capitalization in the exact same manner ?" StuRat (talk) 18:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

If the OP understood the history behind how western languages are written, they would be asking "Why did English start using lowercase letters for most situations excepting at the start of sentences." See Letter_case#History for more information on the practice. --Jayron32 18:49, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I think the important consideration is the separation of sentences from one another. We don't want to think of a piece of written text as one long continuum. So, why the different means of indicating where sentences begin and end? I would have to agree that the origin of a practice does shed light on that practice, but its ongoing use would be expected to have some pluses to recommend it, at least in the context of that language. Bus stop (talk) 19:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the idea of including semantic seperators like punctuation or even spacing between words is considerably more recent than the alphabet itself. Most ancient writing featured the exact unbroken string of text you touch on, without even an indication when words were supposed to start and stop. This greek manuscript shows no obvious word breaks, nor does this latin inscription. --Jayron32 19:17, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Of all the languages to compare English with, you've chosen one that has no letters. What's the upper case of a picture (because that's essentially what Japanese characters are)? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

They are not pictures, and there is no reason why they should not have upper case if somebody had decided this was worthwhile; eg using printed forms for UC and cursive for LC. --ColinFine (talk) 20:54, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

In Japanese writing, it's easy to understand why it wouldn't be feasible to have capital kanji, since, like Chinese characters, there are a huge number of them. But the kana scripts are pretty limited, and it's not crazy to imagine them having capital letters.

There are other alphabetic (or abugida) scripts that don't have capital letters. E.g., Arabic and Hangul. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:17, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I am making some assumptions. I am assuming that sentences are natural to speech, and that written language mimics speech. Therefore, I'm assuming Japanese written language implies where "naturally" spoken "sentences" occur. Question: does written Japanese contain sentences and does written Japanese indicate somehow the beginnings and ends of sentences? If so, how? Bus stop (talk) 20:03, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

The article Japanese punctuation seems likely to answer all such quandries. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.110.38 (talk) 20:20, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I think that in Japanese it is far more obvious where a sentence ends because of the structure of sentences, in English ANY part of speech can end a sentence, though some sound a little weird or nonstandard. Because any part of speech can end an English sentence, then you need another way to indicate where it ends. Consider the semantic chaos implicit in a world without periods and sentences like "I knew he was the man in the red hat turned John looked up at me" What did you know he was? was he the man in the red hat? Did the man in the red hat turn into John? Who looked at you? You can see the problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HominidMachinae (talk • contribs) 20:41, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I think that it's just almost a matter of style, where some languages prefer to use capitals to distinguish different words, and others don't have any capitals at all. it's completly nonstandard, but you understand what i mean if i write like this. YOU CAN PROBABLY ALSO UNDERSTAND IF I WRITE LIKE THIS. Other than what we have come to accept as either a complete lack of formality, or a varying tone in the writing (writing in all caps on an internet post is generally perceived as shouting), I do not believe that the usage of capital letters alters the meaning of the sentence in English. German (in my rather limited understanding) uses capital letters to mark every noun (as well as the beginning of a sentence), which is different from English. In German, a Sentence should be capitalized in this Manner. In French, they don't generally capitalize the months of the year or many other nouns that we would capitalize. Basically, capitals are used in English the way they are, and not in some other languages, because for whatever reason, people started to capitalize English in the way that we now accept as standard (and, I am fairly sure that this is a fairly recent development, we used to begin many more nouns with capitals if I am not mistaken). It is worth noting (to me at least), that at it's very early origins, English was not typically written in Latin characters, but rather Anglo-Saxon runes, so even our own language, or at least a very different and early form thereof, didn't always make a distinction between capitals and lowercase letters (runes had no such distinction). I would be curious to know any theories on why English has come to accept specifically the current standard for capitalization. Falconus^{p t c} 04:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

English used to be capitalized much more like German. See the United States Declaration of Independence for example. There was a thread about this last week or so (too lazy to check the archives myself for it); in American English the modern capitalization system probably became solified sometime in the early 1800's. --Jayron32 04:34, 3 August 2011 (UTC)