Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 November 20

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November 20

How many official national languages are there in the world?

Is there an official list somewhere (like the UN)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Philoknow (talk • contribs) 01:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

The answer will depend on which languages count as "official". Must a language be legally enshrined to be official? Used de facto in government communications? If the first definition is applied, then the United States has no official language, though some US states do. In New Mexico, Spanish is an official language. Does that make Spanish an official language of the United States? Marco polo (talk) 02:10, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, none of that changes the overall count; both English and Spanish are official languages of various other states. If there's a state somewhere that doesn't have an official language, and its dominant language is not an official language of anywhere else, then that would change the count, but I don't know of an example, do you? --Trovatore (talk) 05:05, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

For an overview (mentioning some of the problems of reaching an exact count) see also List of official languages by state. ---Sluzzelin talk 02:18, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

The CIA World Factbook has the most official list I can find. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

What makes that list any more official than any similar list, Mr Fiend? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 04:57, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Jack, I never understood the appeal to the CIA world fact book as some kind of official authority. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:51, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

The guv'mint done told me so. It's more official than the others I dug up: this or this. Whether it's more accurate, well that's another story. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:17, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't that last qualification give the game away? If there's no certainty that the information is accurate, how could it possibly be official? Governments and legislatures who've gone to the trouble of specifying their nations' official languages don't make a habit of making mistakes in the detail. Imagine if Ecuador passed a national language law, and by a slip of the pen it was deemed to be Serbo-Croatian. No, that's hardly possible; but I could more readily believe the CIA guys could publish something like that. I assume the Factbook is reasonably accurate in its listing of the world's official languages, but whatever may be there is what they've gleaned from a multitude of other sources. It is a secondary source and inherently prone to error and inherently unofficial, in exactly the same way that anything you read in Wikipedia has zero "official" status. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 19:09, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Since when did being accurate have anything to do with being official, i.e. "Of or pertaining to an office or public trust" or "Approved by authority" [1]? "Official" usually implies accuracy, as the-powers-that-be probably wouldn't approve something that wasn't accurate, but accuracy is not a necessary condition to being official. Sort of like the distinction between verifiability from a reliable source and "the truth" here on Wikipedia. - One possible point of confusion is that we're dealing with two "official"s here. The first is "official language", meaning that some authority sanctioned that language. (If Ecuador somehow did pass a resolution so blessing Serbo-Croatian, the resolution itself would make Serbo-Croatian an official language of Ecuador, even if not a single person or written item in the country ever used it.) The second is "official list" - meaning an authority has sanctioned this particular list of official languages. The CIA World Fact Book list is an "official list" by dint of being put out by the US Government. (But you're correct in that if the CIA inaccurately listed Serbo-Croatian as an official language of Ecuador, that wouldn't make the language official, even if the list continues to be so.) -- 71.35.111.52 (talk) 22:08, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Have not found one for the UN, but here is some information on the EU: 23 languages for the EU member states. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:51, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Those are the official languages of the European Union, not of the individual member states. For instance, before 2007, Irish was an official language of EU member Ireland but not an official language of the EU. 85.166.47.160 (talk) 16:36, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I was not aware of the distinction as the page seemed to imply the officia languages of the EU consisted of the official languages of the member states other than those with duplicate official languages. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 19:12, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

this source claims 127 official languages of UN member states, but while it seems to be compiled from UN sources, there is no direct citation to the UN, so you may need to do some digging around to confirm it. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:54, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

To respond to Trovatore's question above, I gave the examples of the status of English and Spanish in the United States not because I thought that those specific examples would impact a worldwide count but because they were illustrative of the issues involved. Looking at the list that Sluzzelin linked, there are examples that would affect the worldwide count. For example, Saterland Frisian is listed as a "minority language", whatever that means, in the German state of Lower Saxony. Based on information from the article, this language is presumably mentioned somewhere in the laws or regulations of the German state of Lower Saxony as an acceptable medium for government communications with that minority. Does that mean it is an official language, even if 99.99% of government documents in Germany are never translated into Saterland Frisian? What about Belizean Creole, listed as the lingua franca of Belize. Presumably it is without legal status but used de facto in government communications. Is it an official language? There are dozens of languages like these with questionable status. That is why it is impossible to provide an accurate count without a clear definition of the term official language. Another issue we are bumping against here is what does it mean to be "official"? Is something official if it is sanctioned by a government de facto or through precedent (such as the US government-sanctioned CIA World Factbook). Or must its "official" status be de jure or enshrined in law? Finally, what is meant by a "national official language"? Is this a language that has official status (de facto or de jure or either?) in an entire nation state? Or is it a language that has official status (de facto or de jure or either?) for any nation or people? Marco polo (talk) 16:06, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

• No need to complicate the matter. There are about 200 countries in the world and most of them state clearly their official languages in their constitutions. At least they have some legislation that requires the usage of definite languages in the parliament, courts, law publications etc. The rest of them (mostly these are the English-speaking countries) have de facto official languages, but it is not difficult to count all of them. As a result we have about 150 all-state official languages.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:57, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

That's not necessarily accurate. South Africa's got about 11 official languages if I remember. As for "minority language" that usually refers to a language which is recognized as official in some capacity, often regionally within a country, for which see the status of the Rusyn language in Slovakia and Vojvodina. μηδείς (talk) 04:07, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Yup. Singapore's got four. — SMUconlaw (talk) 09:37, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

But then, most of the main anglophone countries (Canada being one exception) have never made English "official" by way of statute. It's all down to common acceptance. If some MP got up in the Australian Parliament and started rattling on in German, for example, I'm sure something would be said and done about it, but only because he wasn't making himself understood to his parliamentary colleagues, not because he was breaking any sort of law requiring the use of any official language. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 18:51, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

• It is quite easy to draw a line between local/regional and all-national languages. With the last you can go to any corner of a country and use a national language in official circumstances. If you go outside of, let's say, Vojvodina I'm sure none from officials would/could converse with you using Rusyn. But they still would use Serbian with ease. It's not difficult to count national languages, but situation with regional languages is a very different story.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:49, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I actually had a client once who wished to change his father's account into his own name. The father was leaving the next day for Yugoslavia, and spoke I think Serb, if I remember right--either Serb or Croat. I had to crib together some broken Rusyn, Russian and our version of the Lord's Prayer and say to the Father, Ja muszim znati tsi nomer accounta vo inmja otsa budet vo imja suna? To je dobre? It must have sounded like something out of Monty Python. But he understood me clearly, said yes, and then went off in a long rambling statement in Serbian. I felt very bad, because all I could say was Ja ne razumim, ne howorim po-Serbski, ja Amerkansky. Moja Baba slovaczka. Of course he could have been from Novi Sad. μηδείς (talk) 21:41, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

garden path sentence

Hi, could you please help me understand the sentence quoted here, I am not parsing it right, this word "from" confuses me:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=GCYXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

"A sealed crustless sandwich for providing a convenient sandwich without an outer crust which can be stored for long periods of time without a central filling from leaking outwardly."

You can add words, add commas, remove words, whatever. Just help me understand. (This is how I read it: "A sealed[,] crustless sandwich[.] [F]or providing[:] a convenient sandwich[-]without[-]an[-]outer[-]crust which can be stored[-]for[-]long[-]periods[-]of[-]time[-] ( without[-]a[-]central[-]filling[-] from [-]leaking[-]outwardly )".) --91.120.48.242 (talk) 11:02, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I think it is a mistake: it does not make sense as it stands (though the intention is clear). I think the writer was thinking that the preventing was present in the sentence. Possibly a previous draft had contained preventing, or perhaps the memory of the word providing confused the writer. --ColinFine (talk) 13:12, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Colin, the writer (or another writer) was probably thinking to stop it from leaking or the like and got interrupted mid sentence or editted without the from being removed. Happens all the time in my writing. μηδείς (talk) 17:40, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

The whole patent application is full of grammar errors. It's pretty amusing, though. Looie496 (talk) 17:51, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Spelling of Mount Kailas or Kailash

Mount Kailas is also called and spelled Kailash. In Devanagari spelling, it appears as either कैलास (kailās ~ kailāsa) or कैलाश (kailāś ~ kailāśa) This question is about the discrepancy between the two spellings. The difference hinges on the last letter: either स् (transliterated ‹s›, pronounced [s]) or श् (transliterated ‹ś›, also ‹sh›; pronounced [ʃ] in Hindi, [ç] in Sanskrit).

The Hindi Vikipīḍiyā article on this mountain uses only the spelling with श (i.e., "Kailash"). The Hindi editors there have chosen to make no mention of the spelling कैलास ("Kailas") for the mountain. The English Wikipedia article uses the spelling "Kailash" and in the lead mentions there are two forms of the name, but with no explanation of why and how.

The Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary gives only the form "कैलास kailāsa," while the Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary uses "कैलास kailās" as the main headword, and cross-references it from "कैलाश kailāś," which it lists as a "pronunciation variant." The Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Equivalents gives the name as "Kai-la-ça," spelling it with the Tibetan letter corresponding to श (ś or sh), but gives the Sanskrit equivalent as "कैलास" (Kailāsa). The dictionaries seem agreed on "Kailas," but Wikipedias in both English and Hindi agree on "Kailash."

1. Why are there two spellings in common use?

2. Is one spelling specifically Sanskrit and the other specifically Hindi? In other words, is one spelling tatsama and the other tadbhava? If so, which is which?

3. What is the basis for choosing one spelling or the other as the standardized form of the name for, say, the title of a Wikipedia article? In other words, is a given spelling more appropriate in certain contexts and the other spelling in certain other contexts? Or is the variation completely random?

I searched Google, Google Books, and the Library of Congress database for answers to these questions, and turned up nothing at all. I asked on both the English and Hindi talk pages; the former occasioned a discussion that only became more confusing as no one knew the answers, while my question simply disappeared mysteriously from the latter. I am not attached to either spelling; I just think Wikipedia users ought to be able to find out the reasons for the two names and the criteria used for establishing the one or the other as a standardized form. I feel that somewhere someone must have studied this and published a good explanation of it. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 16:45, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

श् ś and स् s have merged in the native vocabulary of most (all?) Modern Indo-Aryan languages (cf. Hindi दस das "ten" < Sanskrit दश daśa). In Hindi, the distinction between these two sounds is maintained only in borrowings, be it from Sanskrit or from other languages (Persian, English). At least in some dialects, however, श् ś tends to be pronounced like स् s even in loanwords. Given that the original Sanskrit form seems to be कैलास Kailāsa, the substitution of स् s by श् ś seems likely to be a hypercorrection. --BishkekRocks (talk) 20:31, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Any chance there's a citation for this? I'm looking for a way to edit it into the article, but a citation would be nice to fend off the dreaded cn tag. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 21:37, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

No idea. It's just my guess - though the case looks quite obvious, IMO. --BishkekRocks (talk) 21:51, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Uses of don't and doesn't

I believe "doesn't" should only be used for third person singular subjects. However, it's less clear to me in the following sentences. Which is correct and why? Is this different in British and American English?

Example 1 Why don't Fruitlands (Fruitlands is a madeup name of a shop) sell apples? Why doesn't Fruitlands sell Apples?

Example 2 Why don't the automotive industry use machines? Why doesn't the automotive industry use machines?

Example 3 Fruitlands don't sell apples. Fruitlands doesn't sell apples.

Example 4 The automotive industry don't use machines. The automotive industry doesn't use machines. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.132.238.133 (talk) 18:58, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks 82.132.239.233 (talk) 18:52, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

In 1 and 3, both can be correct, as you can use the name of a shop as a mass noun for the people in the organisation, or as a singular noun for the shop. I would only ever use the singular for when talking about an industry, but perhaps it could be treated the same way. I'm not sure about UK vs US usage. - filelakeshoe 19:05, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't is only used with a singular third person subject, otherwise don't is used, on which both British and American agree. However, there has been a tendency over the last century for Brits to treat formally singular subjects like the BBC or sports teams like Manchester United which represent groups of people as if they were plural, while the US still treats FOX Broadcasting or The US Senate as singular. Hence Americans would say the BBC does not produce The Simpsons, while Brits would likely say The BBC do not produce The Simpsons. This is an innovation in British English that you won't find in older movies or writing. μηδείς (talk) 19:26, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

That is, for all of your examples above, doesn't would be used in standard American English. Apparently, for 1) and 3) above, either form can be used in British English. See American and British English differences#Formal and notional agreement. Marco polo (talk) 19:58, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

As a side comment, "he don't" is very common in substandard American usage in urban midlantic speech. I don't think I ever once heard my maternal uncle say "he doesn't". μηδείς (talk) 20:53, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

A hundred years ago, some fairly upper class people (including supposedly Woodrow Wilson) used "he don't" in informal speech (not in writing). AnonMoos (talk) 00:28, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

This was a common affectation by upper class speakers on both sides of the Atlantic - more an attempt to be amusing than out of ignorance I suspect. Bertie Wooster and Lord Peter Wimsey are fictional examples who were heavy users of "don't" instead of "doesn't" and "ain't" instead of "isn't". Alansplodge (talk) 17:23, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not necessarily an affectation. If you're not familiar with the concept, U and non-U English can seem rather reversed. To hand-wave, the non-U aspiring middle classes used the more flowery/formal/euphemistic/"proper" terms to seem more refined than their birth would otherwise place them, whereas the U upperclass, not needing to pretend to be more noble than their birth, stuck with older terms, which were in many cases the same as those used by the working classes. - I don't know if "ain't" or "don't" would make the list of U/non-U differences, but if they were to, they'd likely be on the U side of things. -- 205.175.124.30 (talk) 22:29, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Well yes, but turns of phrase like that would (I contend) have only been used in a light hearted context. Alansplodge (talk) 02:06, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I think the writings of W S Gilbert argue against you. When the Lord Chancellor amends the fairy law at the end of Iolanthe, he makes it read "Every fairy ... who don't marry a mortal". You might argue that the whole context is a comic piece, but inside the piece, this is a legal context, which one would expect to be formal. --ColinFine (talk) 14:16, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, Dickens often uses "he don't", even for the higher-class characters. According to Google Ngrams, "he doesn't" overtook "he don't" only around 1875. Lesgles (talk) 19:27, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Alansplodge -- Such quasi-upper-class types didn't ordinarily use "he don't" in writing, but when they used it in speech with their family and close friends, I don't think they usually felt that they were slumming or being self-consciously jocular... AnonMoos (talk) 15:06, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Chinese help

What are the Chinese characters at this image of the "Teresa Hu Center"? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 19:18, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

They are 胡王惠瓊活動中心 . Marco polo (talk) 19:55, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! WhisperToMe (talk) 20:44, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Idu do kraju, de kurtsi sraju

Can anybody translate "Idu do kraju, de kurtsi sraju"? I am not sure of the spelling. μηδείς (talk) 20:43, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

It resembles my native Serbo-Croatian, though it's neither standard nor dialectal (nor grammatical). It's probably not Bulgarian either, judging on cases. It could mean "They [or perhaps I] go to the end, where the dicks shit"; I'm only certain it's vulgar, because kurtsi would mean "dicks" in all Slavic languages. The standard Serbian for the above would read "Idu do kraja gde kurci seru" (and it does not rhyme). Even as a curse, the sentence makes little sense. Of course, I could easily miss the translation, there's too much noise in the channel. No such user (talk) 21:15, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh, that's very interesting, since my Grandmother taught me it! Is there any other possible translation of "kurtsi"? Again, I am not sure of the spelling. PS, based on the words themselves, and not my prior comments on these pages, can anyone Identify where the dialect represented by this saying is likely located? μηδείς (talk) 22:26, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

You omitted to mention what language your grandmother spoke. It's not Polish, as in Polish it would be: "Idę do kraju, gdzie XXXXi srają", or "Im going to the country (nation, not countryside), where the XXXXs shit". Whatever XXXX is, I can't tell. Nothing similar in Polish. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:46, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I omitted it on purpose (and don't want those who already know what language it is to give it away) because I want to know if anyone can verify it apart from what she's told me, and I don't want to prejudice the answers. I was taught the rhyme as a bawdy 'limerick', but only because of the final verb. I am curious whether the noun of the second phrase has two meanings--I was only taught one, and certainly not "dick". Does that word mean "dick" or sound like a word that means "dick" in Polish? μηδείς (talk) 23:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

You don't believe your own grandmother??? In any case, no, it isn't Polish, for sure. Not even badly mangeled Polish. So if she told you Polish, she's a liar. Then you'd have to ask yourself whether she's been lying all these years about being your grandmother. By the way, your method might not work anyway. My grandparents used to say some vulgar phrases like this in Russian, and they were Polish. If I asked what language "job twoju mać" was in, nobody would answer Polish, and my memories of my grandparents would be tainted. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:55, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Obviously I believed my grandmother, but she spent all but her childhood in the US, was not an academic, and was never formally trained in her dialect, only a few years of Great Russian to teach her the alphabet, even though she was born closer to Krakow than Kiev. As for job twoju mac, in English we say "pardon my French" when we curse. μηδείς (talk) 03:53, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

But it does match Polish "Idę do kraju, gdzie XXXXi srają" pretty well, except for the next-to-last word, doesn't it? At least better than Serbo-Croatian. As for my assertion that kurtsi would mean "dicks" in all Slavic languages, it seems that I rushed to conclusion; it apparently does not in Polish. (The root of the word is wikt:кур, 'rooster'). But still, we didn't solve the mystery. No such user (talk) 00:05, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking that, but the 't' made me unsure. In Polish, it would be "kury". The diminutive doesn't mean "penis", but a type of mushroom, the Chanterelle. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 00:49, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

• It looks like some dialectal Ukrainian. It also can be dialectal Russian as well. It could mean "I'm going very far away", "I'm going nowhere", "It's not your business where I'm going" or something similar.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:23, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
• Kurtsi is the plural of kurka "chicken, hen".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 00:27, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Yes, Ljuboslov's got it. The phrase supposedly means "I am going (out) to the country where the chickens (i.e., hens) shit." My grandmother Hanna, who could converse with Russians, Ukraines, Poles, and Serbo-Croats, who celebrated the Catholic Mass in Church Slavonic, and who was formally taught what she called po-moskowski in grade school, taught it to me without a hint of shame. She said it when she wanted to say "none of your business". So I think she only thought "kurtsi" meant "hens". But I suspect it may have been a double entendre given the Serbian meaning stated above. As for Poles, she complained they were the hardest to understand, what with their "-pszie -pszie -pszie", as she said it. I am still quite curious if anyone can specify the geographic origin of the phrase as spoken. μηδείς (talk) 01:31, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

When I saw it I thought it was Cieszyn Silesian dialect or Šarišstina (which we don't have an article on) something similar, something from the Polish-Slovak borderlands.[2] - filelakeshoe 09:15, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Seems to be almost nothing about Šarišstina on the web, but this page (assume it's in Slovak?) site talks about them. μηδείς (talk)

Ah, I put an extra S in there [3]. Slovaks also call this dialect "východniarčina". I expect it has a few things in common with Rusyn/Ukrainian. - filelakeshoe 18:17, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Rusyn is not Ukrainian or a dialect of it, but a transitional dialect between Slovak, Polish and Ukranian, sharing diagnostic features of all three and unique innovations of its own. (East and West Slavic are a dialect continuum, with Rusyn on the border between the two.) Rusyn's got znam and mam like Slovak, where Ukranian has znaju and maju, it has a unique development of the vowel found in dycz "rain" while Ukranian has дощ, Russian дождь, Polish deszcz and Slovak dážď. It has penultimate stress like Polish, while Ukrainian has free stress. It has optional use of the present form of "to be" which is lost in the East. "Very" is bars, "and" is ta, "yes" is hej, "head" is the western hlava, not the diagnostic Eastern golova. (The threat na hlavu was common.) And speaking of hlavu--that was pronounced hlawu, with slavic 'v' almost always being pronounced as 'w'. The number nine, for instance, is /'dɛwjat/. Of course there is no one standard, and wide variation. But calling Rusyn Ukrainian is more a post-annexation political statement than anything else. μηδείς (talk) 19:24, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh, wow, that's really cool. Never heard of the Cieszyn Silesian dialect. Just as they do, my family refers to our speech as "po naszomu"! (You also hear Rusyn, Rusky, Rusinsky and Rusnak.) My mother's father's father considered himself "Russian", had an Austro-Hungarian passport, told Americans after WWI he was from Czechoslovakia, visited the Ukraine in the 1930's, wrote in the Latin alphabet using Polish spelling (sz for the sh sound, etc.) and used some German loanwords, such as writing "Ja kupil haus", followed by the date of purchase and street address in a letter. μηδείς (talk) 17:37, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Arabic help

What is the Arabic in http://www.arabamericanmuseum.org/images/MainSiteTitle.gif ?

It does not look the same as the Arabic used at ar:المتحف العربي الأمريكي القومي

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 21:23, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

It's almost the same...the difference is that the Arabic Wikipedia article says "Arab American National Museum" but the site's logo just says "Arab American Museum". Adam Bishop (talk) 23:57, 20 November 2012 (UTC)