Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 January 26

< Wikipedia:Reference desk | Archives | Language
Language desk
< January 25 << Dec | January | Feb >> January 27 >
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.


January 26

edit

tak

edit

I would like to know the meaning(s) of the word "tak".

These are the results I received searching Wikipedia for this word: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=meaning+of+tak&title=Special%3ASearch JaysMarion (talk) 01:20, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In which language? In Czech it means "so" or "then", as in "tak jedeme!" = "so let's go!", or "like this", as in "děláme to tak" = "we do it like this"; in Polish it means "yes"; in my constructed language it means "dog"... - filelakeshoe 01:24, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Per Filelakeshoe, it isn't a word in English. Where did you encounter the word? --Jayron32 01:25, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also means "thank you" in Danish (spelled differently, it means "thank you" in Swedish (tack) and Norwegian (takk)). Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 01:31, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In Swedish, tak means "roof" or "ceiling". The pronunciation is different from tack - tak has a slightly longer a sound. JIP | Talk 07:23, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary may be more useful if you do really just require a list of meanings in every language. My, that page even mentions Wymysorys. - filelakeshoe 01:33, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But it omits Russian, in which it is certainly a word, albeit spelt cyrillically (так, not the same our tak). It's probably in Ukrainian and other slavic cousins. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 01:45, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Slavic word is cognate with the English thus: i.e., "like that". μηδείς (talk) 03:54, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I like that remark, but to whom are you addressing it? -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 05:36, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of indentation implies a thread-wide context, not subordination to a previous respondant. That will be $5, please. 22:27, 26 January 2013 (UTC)`
It seemed to follow hard upon my Russian and Slavic allusion, so I'm not sure how it gets to be "thread-wide context". Unless it's a case of "I'm responding to what Jack said, but I'm not saying it to Jack".
Oh, btw, I don't pay money to people who can't spell "respondent". Lift your game and ... I still won't pay you, but you'll be a better person. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 04:50, 27 January 2013 (UTC) [reply]
I am still not sure I understand your concern. The OP asked about a word and I commented on its Slavic meaning. I did assume he read your comment, which I did, and found correct and helpful. But I was responding to him, not you. There may be some alphabetical issue going on, since although I and my relatives studied cyrillic, we all, as Austro-Hungarians or Americans used the Latin alphabet. I don't "think in cyrillic". μηδείς (talk) 05:14, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your post is stuck way out in left field, at the same indent level (= zero) as the OP's question. A response direct to the OP's original question is indented one (1) level (that's one colon; and no asterisks, as you're prone to use). Very simple rules, but spurn them at the peril of confusing others. Only yesterday you amended a post of mine because it used 2 colons instead of 1, so that tells us you know the rules. Yet sometimes you act in ignorance of them. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 05:28, 27 January 2013 (UTC) [reply]
Since your question was not very specific, this may be well outside its scope, but in the Discworld fictional series by Terry Pratchett, Tak is the name of the Dwarf race's Creator God. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 84.21.143.150 (talk) 14:19, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Passive voice

edit

Occasionally, while editing a Wikipedia article, I'll analyze the text with a number of proofreading tools.  When analyzing 'style', the results often recommend reducing the 'passive voice', which is typically 80% or more.  There is no style option for Encyclopedia, but the percentage of passive voice is regarded as too high for all style comparisons such as essay, journal or thesis.  However, for an encyclopedic article I am thinking that a passive voice is not such a bad thing.  Opinions?  Suggestions?  ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 06:24, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It really isn't such a bad thing. I'm not quite sure where the odd proscription against using the passive voice comes from, but in many cases, the passive voice actually allows for more natural and easier to understand constructions. For example, the phrase "I was hit by a car" is in passive voice, but sounds more natural than "A car hit me", which is entirely correct but idiomatically a bit off. There are many sound, stylistic and editorial reasons to use the passive voice, and I'm not sure that programs that analyze writing for the "percent of passive voice" or recommend certain levels of usage thereof are very helpful in improving writing. The Wikipedia article English passive voice has some guidance here. --Jayron32 06:52, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'll check out the article. ~Thanks, ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 06:58, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In business communications, at least, we've been taught that passive voice is considered poor usage, because it sounds bureaucratic. Active voice sounds crisper and to the point. And I realize that I've got some passive voice in this comment. But if you've ever read a memo filled with passive voice, you'll get the idea. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:16, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Jayron's passive voice example "I was hit by a car" is better than "A car hit me" specifically because the former frontloads the focus of the sentence, which is "I" and not "the car". One reason that it is often recommended (sic) that the passive voice be avoided (sic) is that it is often used (sic) as a way to be evasive about who did the actual action ("Mistakes were made"). Sometimes it just accidentally avoids telling who did the action: When I used to supervise doctoral dissertations, I saw that often the student would say things like "This hypothesis was examined" or whatever, leaving me wondering whether it was examined by some previous author or whether it was examined by my student as part of the research he's going to report later in his writing.
Another reason to avoid the passive voice, which applies to e.g. novel-writing as well as to the context that Bugs mentions above, is that the active voice is more immediate to the reader -- it feels, well, active.
So there are reasons to do it either way, depending on context. Just using a ratio calculation is worthless -- each sentence needs to be examined for its own characteristics. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:07, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Parallelling the car example, in the Monty Python sketch about the Hungarian phrasebook, the drugstore manager tells the policeman, "I was hit by him!" No, actually it was, "He hit me!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:41, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think the difference is that there's a tendency to not want to give "agency" (for lack of a better word) to inanimate objects; when dealing with the interaction between a person and an object, it feels odd to make the object the sentence, because it implies the object had some volition or agency in committing the act. "The car hit me" feels a bit like the car could have had some say in the matter. "I was hit by the car" avoids this. In the case of "He hit me" vs. "I was hit by him", the active voice version doesn't have this problem, so it sounds better. --Jayron32 18:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Active/passive choice is typically a matter of two competing sets of factors: the animacy dimension you just described, which favours the subject position for animate agents, and the topic–comment dimension, which depends on which parts of the sentence are contextually given and which are newly introduced into the discourse. There's been a lot of ink spilled on this; perhaps this is a good overview. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:31, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The article is informative and interesting. I still have trouble positively identifying exactly where the voice becomes passive (with the exception of finding to be type transitives). However, I know a passive voice when I read it. Regarding the use of proofreading programs, they help me to identify problematic editing technique or style; and 80% passive seems to be (sic) rather excessive. The article mentions that "a statistical study found about 13 percent passive constructions in newspapers and magazines."[1] ~Eric F 18:30, 26 January 2013 (UTC) ~ Of course, one thing that the programs can't do (yet) is provide context on a case-by-case basis, which is why human editors are still useful. ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 19:06, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To me agentless passives seem the natural choice for encyclopedic articles. It's easy to write in active voice about a person, but when it comes to objects, whether it's canals or toothbrushes, there usually are few things they "do": the article will be mostly about how, where, when, why they are made and used. Unless you can come up with a dozen synonyms for "people", active voice would become quite repetitive. And it places emphasis on an agent that (except when discussing regional and historic details) isn't needed (or wanted). Ssscienccce (talk) 20:40, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 January 26#Weird verb that can't be done but is only done.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:15, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The ignorant witch-hunt against the passive voice in English is something that Geoffrey Pullum over at Language Log has been documenting for some time now. See here: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/grammar/passives.html. I emphatically recommend people check out those articles, ESPECIALLY if you are or want to become an editor or an English teacher. 209.159.255.226 (talk) 20:34, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, yes, the passive certainly has its place, otherwise it wouldn't even exist. But sometimes the naked shame with which journalists employ it is very telling. On the one hand, we hear "Channel 69 can exclusively reveal that yadda yadda". That's when they're claiming the credit. But when they want to downplay their ignorance, we're told "It's not known when this event happened". Never "We don't know when this event happened". -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 21:00, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So, you watch Channel 69 a lot? μηδείς (talk) 02:33, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd happily go into it in great detail, but I think we've had enough of ref desk respondents' lurid sex lives to last us for quite some time. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 04:41, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the passive is often used in politic-speak in a way that suggests that somebody is avoiding taking or admitting responsibility. Whenever I hear the phrase "Lessons will be learned" I want to shout "Who will be learning these lessons?" --ColinFine (talk) 09:42, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And "should be considered" is just not active.  :) -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 19:26, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please do better than Google Translate

edit

What is Michael Lieber's position, according to this article from the Siegener Zeitung? Is it potentially something that would pass WP:POLITICIAN, do you think? I tried Google Translate, but like it often does with German, it gave me a pile of gibberish. Nyttend (talk) 14:34, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Lieber has an article on the German Wikipedia, and he is the 'Landrat' (administrator/governor) of Altenkirchen, see Districts_of_Germany#District_administration: "The executive authority [of a district] is an officer known as Landrat or Landrätin, who administers the district." I'm not sure about notability, the article you link to only mentions him in passing, but he is named in a number of other articles, e.g. [2], although they all seem to be in local newspapers. - Lindert (talk) 15:49, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The article from Siegener Zeitung as well as the article in the German Wikipedia de:Michael Lieber name his position as Landrat. Holders of this public office are notable for the German Wikipedia according to their criteria for notability de:Wikipedia:Relevanzkriterien. The office itself is described in de:Landrat (Deutschland) and translated here. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 16:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm rather astonished to find that the German WP has apparently systematically covered landräte with biographical articles – given that they are normally less inclusionist than we are here, and quite strict on notability criteria. I'd say these persons won't normally fit WP:POLITICIAN. The guideline demands "international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office", and a landkreis is substantially less than a province or state (that level would be that of the federal states in Germany). It's really much more akin to municipial offices – a landkreis may have anywhere between 50,000 and 500,000 inhabitants. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:05, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the input; I had guessed that he held some high-up position in the government of his Bundesland. This came up because of an AFD for our current Michael Lieber article; I was thinking of suggesting that we replace the article about a nonnotable subject with a stub about the German politician, but now I won't do that. Trying to understand this position in US terms — would he be comparable to an elected executive for a county (United States)? Or is he some sort of bureaucrat that gets appointed by the Bundesland's government to run the Landkreis' programs? Nyttend (talk) 17:54, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's slightly different between different federal states. Traditionally, at least in some areas, they used to be centrally appointed civil servants, but now they are mostly elected officials, similar to mayors on the municipal level. A landkreis is roughly equivalent to a US county, so yes, I guess an elected county executive would be the closest match. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:12, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Overuse of the progressive

edit

There's a style of speech which I find very grating, though I'm not sure if it's due to some grammatical disagreement of mine or due to my association of it with irritatingly bureaucratic sales people and office staff. It's a construction where nearly every verb needs to be in the progressive aspect, as in "What was it you were wanting to be looking at?" rather than the perfectly fine "What would you like to see?" or the perhaps too abrupt "What do you want?". I guess my questions are: what is up with that and why do I find it so annoying? Are they speaking overly circuitously as a hyper-correction to being too blunt/rude? Matt Deres (talk) 16:48, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it seems to be a hypercorrection against rudeness to say "What was it you were wanting to be looking at?" I can see how someone might find it irritating, though I think that I would find it amusing. On the other hand, it sounds natural to say "What was it you were looking for", which has one less instance of the progressive, and a valid one at that.
What I find irritating is a fad or trend in recent years among law enforcement spokespeople of using the emphatic "did" in announcements, as in "The suspect did rob the couple, and officers did arrest him". The implication is that the listeners have already asked whether he robbed them and whether he has been arrested. Duoduoduo (talk) 17:45, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One of my pet peeves: "A preposition is something one should never end a sentence with". ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 19:00, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Verily. It's nonsense like that up with which you should not put. With my apologies to Churchill - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:27, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Or the unnecessary use of "today": "Do you need any help today?", or "Was there anything else you wanted to discuss today?". Next time I'm asked that I'm gonna say "No thanks, everything's perfectly fine today, but I want to make an appointment to discuss a major problem I predict will occur next week. No point waiting till the last minute, is there, now. I like to be proactive about these things.". -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 20:49, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One of my Indian friends said "I am having a child" so I congratulated her, only to find out later, her child was 18 years old and just starting university. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:06, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is an increasing tendency to use the progressive with stative verbs like know, love or want that previously wouldn't take it. McDonald's with their "I'm lovin' it" slogan and other youth- and lower class-oriented marketers have adopted what is euphemistically called 'urban' phrasing in their advertising, which both reflects and pushes culture. See sources on the increasing use of the progressive. μηδείς (talk) 22:25, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have used that "I'm loving it" on postcards, when on holiday. It has always implied, to me, that it was temporary. McDonalds is surprisingly honest. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:14, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am having a feeling you are younger than I am. μηδείς (talk) 23:08, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am indeed only 40, but at least I can spell 'loving' without an apostrophe and a missing 'g', unlike McDonalds' marketing department. And I don't want fries with that, old chap. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 04:45, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So next time your loved one says "I'm loving you, baby", you can validly ask "For how long?". There are lots of songs called Loving You. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 19:24, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But that is surely in the main a gerund rather than an abbreviated version of "I'm loving you". It certainly is in the Minnie Riperton song, which is the only one of those listed I'm readily familiar with: "Lovin' you is easy cos you're beautiful". As such it doesn't have the temporary aspect of the progressive forms. Valiantis (talk) 23:08, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Jack's observation reminds me of a joke in Kruko kaj Baniko el Bervalo which refers to an historic debate among Esperantists over whether 'was [verb]ed' ought to be estis —ata (with the present passive participle) or estis —ita (with the past passive participle); the resolution was that aspect – which, curiously, otherwise has little expression in Esperanto – decides. — The joke: A woman tells her friend, "...mi estis amorita de li (I was [carnally] loved by him)". The friend replies, "You ought to say amorata [progressive aspect], to indicate the pleasant duration of the process." The first woman remarks, "Indeed, I hope it was a daŭro sen rezulto (duration without result)!" —Tamfang (talk) 06:30, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2013_January_26&oldid=1089642729"