Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 January 31

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January 31

What is it Westergren?

there is test that called westergren. My qestion is what is it the meaning of this word? I have not found this word in the dictionary.194.114.146.227 (talk) 08:02, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I daresay the test is named after someone called Westergren ( Alf Vilhelm Albertsson Westergren, it is in the article, from Sweden). Lectonar (talk) 08:08, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, thank you for the help! 194.114.146.227 (talk) 09:09, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

(Non-)Mutual intelligibility of Russian and Serbo-Croatian

While I was in Avignon last summer, I came into contact with a group of young Russians. They were surprised to learn that I, a Bosnian, and a Montenegrin girl I met there could understand them - almost fully when they spoke slowly. Of course, neither of us ever studied Russian and could only understand it (as oppose to speak it). It appears that their astonishment was due to the fact that they could not understand either of us no matter how slowly we spoke. Is there an explanation for this phenomenon? My guess would be that Russian is more conservative than Serbo-Croatian (i.e., Serbo-Croatian is more innovative than Russian), enabling the two of us to comprehend Russian words (which appeared archaic to us) but not the other way around. Is this correct? Is there another possibility? Surtsicna (talk) 14:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Another possibility would be that you found it easier because as Serbo-Croatian speakers, you're used to listening to people speak in a wide range of dialects and registers and understanding them all, whereas Russian speakers are not so much. This would mean the amount of vocabulary stored in your passive memory would be considerably higher. I observe the same thing between speakers of Polish and Slovak, which are supposedly mutually intelligible, but most Polish speakers claim not to understand any language that borders theirs. Most Slovaks, on the other hand, have probably met at least one vychodniar in their life, and will be able to make more connections. - filelakeshoe 14:44, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

On a related note, when I was working in South Korea, I could understand what was being said (using my knowledge of Chinese and Japanese) but couldn't say anything back. One guy even managed to teach me the rules of Korean Chess, and I understood him perfectly (I even beat him), but I couldn't say anything to him. It's fairly common. Using my knowledge of French, Latin, and Spanish, I can understand Italian and Romanian, even though I cannot speak those languages. I understand Dutch from my knowledge of German (but I speak German with a Dutch accent - work that one out.) It's a very common phenomenon. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:10, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Could they understand you though? Intelligibility is a common phenomenon but it would usually be expected to work in both ways. What the OP was saying was that in this case, it didn't. - filelakeshoe 18:19, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Not at all. I would have had to use a combination of Japanese and Chinese for the Koreans to understand me. The only person I could speak to, in this small village (besides the children I was teaching) was this taxi driver, who spoke fluent Japanese, and he knew about me (being a small village) and the fact I could speak Japanese. Oh, and besides that, there was a Zulu, which was interesting. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:44, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Wait... how? The analogy with the Romance languages doesn't work out. Italian and Romanian are not only intimately related to but grammatically and phonetically similar with French and Spanish (all of which are based on Latin), whereas Chinese and Japanese are not even (closely) related to Korean. I assume there has been extensive borrowing of Chinese and Japanese words into Korean, which for most of history has been the "little brother" between the two mighty civilizations, but it would be like an Englishman going to France and trying to understand French, no? 72.128.82.131 (talk) 03:27, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Japanese and Korean have borrowed words extensively from Chinese. It is very difficult to have a normal conversation without using them. It is possible to work out the meaning from the context, even though all three languages are not related (though some say Korean is related to Japanese, which I believe, having very similar grammar). Even Japanese children can get along a bit reading Chinese, because of the Chinese characters. With Korean, once you get used to the sound changes from Chinese to Korean, and have the word order from Japanese, it's not so difficult. Korean becomes a hybrid language. Your example was not quite right. I would suggest a German who speaks French coming to England and trying to understand. I think that's probably the best example (though these languages are ultimately related). KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:43, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Surtsicna -- The well-known classic case is Portuguese and Spanish, where most of the time it's easier for Portuguese-speakers who haven't studied Spanish to understand Spanish than it is for Spanish-speakers who haven't studied Portuguese to understand Portuguese... -- AnonMoos (talk) 18:37, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

WHAAOE: Asymmetric intelligibility 109.99.71.97 (talk) 19:13, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

(ec) Yes, I was just going to point out the same thing as AnonMoos. The reason for the asymmetrical comprehensibility is that, for the most part, Spanish is phonetically conservative in vowels and consonants (j and x being exceptions) whereas, in comparison to their common ancestor, Portuguese has changed more, especially in its treatment of vowels (changes in quality and reduction of unstressed vowels) and the 'weakening' and dropping of certain consonants. In essence, Portuguese is further in the future than Spanish. To a Portuguese speaker careful Spanish will sound like an emphasized old-fashioned reading (where every vowel is given its full value) while to a Spanish speaker Portuguese sounds slurred and mushy. My personal impression of Portuguese is that it sounds like drunken Frenchman trying to speak Spanish. Another poor analogy might be that Kanye West in full ebonics mode would probably have no problem understanding George Washington if he met him, while Washington would have no idea what "A'ma sang, a'ight?" (I am going to sing, all right?) would mean.

Paradoxically, Serbo-Croatian is more conservative in its vowels than Russian(akanje, vowel reduction in Russian), almost an exact parallel to Spanish and Portuguese, with Russian now having the altered and reduced vowels in non-stress situations. I suspect the mutual intelligibility here is cultural. The Slavic languages are much closer to each other than, say, the Western Romance languages. My grandmother, who came from the north east of the Austro-Hungarian empire could understand Poles, Russians and Yugoslavs. I wouldn't expect Russians to have a hard time with slowly spoken simple Yugoslav dialects. As suggested above, there may be a lack of experience or willingness on the part of speakers of a large standardized language to understand foreigners. One can easily imagine a US tourist wishing that Scotsmen would 'speak English'. I am curious what sort of information we have on mutual intelligibility of specific sets of languages. μηδείς (talk) 19:33, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I don’t think that phonetic features are the issue, in either direction. The reason I, as a West Slav, can understand next to nothing of any South Slavic language is that the vocabulary is totally alien to me, and I suppose this would be a problem for Russian speakers as well. (I can’t tell whether I would have the same problem with East Slavic languages if I didn’t learn some Russian in school.)—Emil J. 19:57, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Czech also seems to be an outlier with German influence like its fixed initial stress. It is like Portuguese to me as a Spanish speaker in that I think I can read it, then when I hear it it might as well be Hungarian for all I can make out of it. μηδείς (talk) 21:00, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

My story is about my late ex-parents-in-law. Father-in-law was born in 1912 in Kharkov (now in Ukraine but then part of Russia). His family spoke only Russian; he was only in Kharkov because his father was an adjutant to a Russian general and they moved around a lot. When he was 4, all his family was wiped out in the Revolution and he was taken by the Red Cross to an orphanage in Belgrade. There his name was changed, he grew up speaking Serbian (or Serbo-Croatian), and many other dramatic events ensued. His schooling was rudimentary; he became a soccer player and a mechanic. His Serbian was always tinged by his early russophile childhood, and whenever he switched back to Russian it was more than tinged by his serbophile upbringing. He was a mongrel (and in more ways than one, but those details are not for here). The tragedy of his life is that he spent almost all of it in hostile linguistic environments, and had neither the training nor the natural aptitude to overcome it. He lived in Australia longer than I did, but his English was always very poor. My Russian from 3 years of uni training was a lot better than his English from 50 years of live exposure. But then, he always took every possible opportunity to avoid anglo situations and friends.

I'm thinking you mean –phone rather than –phile. —Tamfang (talk) 06:32, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Not so mother-in-law. She was the scholar of the family; she was studying medicine in Sarajevo (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) when the war put paid to those plans. Her written English became very good, and she even ended up writing and publishing her memoirs. She became very comfortable in anglo environments, even if her spoken English was always quite strongly accented. She was born in Split (now Croatia) to a Serbian father and a Polish-Jewish mother. Her father was a diplomat who was often away, and her mother died young, so she was sent for her education to a monastery in the mountains in what is now Slovenia, run by Russian Orthodox monks. There she was taught Russian, Serbian (or Serbo-Croatian), German, French and English. They met in Sarajevo and married there. Then WW2 happened <a very long story cut out here> and they ended up as displaced persons. They came to Australia with their 2 baby sons, and settled outside Sydney, where their daughter (my future ex) was born.

They made an early decision that they would identify as part of the Russian community because it was much more relevant to the world at that time (early 1950s) than Yugoslavia was. That didn't mean they always spoke Russian at home, though. When it was just the two of them, it was mainly Serbian (in his case, Russo-Serbian), but they raised their children to consider themselves Russian-Australians, they had them baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church, and they spoke mainly Russian around them (in their father's case, Serbo-Russian). My ex spoke Russian as her first language, as her parents made the very wise imo decision to not impart their very bad English to her but let the Australian community perform that role (of imparting bad English to her, LOL). She quickly learnt English when she went to school, and has ever since been totally fluent in both languages. With parents with those Serbo-credentials, and their having many Serbian friends along with their Russian friends, one might think she would have learned Serbian as well as Russian. But no. To this day, she can understand the gist of it, and can say some short phrases of Serbian, but as for conducting a decent conversation in Serbian, forget it. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 22:10, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that's a lot of history to live through. μηδείς (talk) 00:46, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Another commonly cited example is that of the Scandinavian languages, where Norwegians appear to understand Swedes and Danes better than vice versa. One of the articles mentioned above links to this report: http://www.let.rug.nl/gooskens/pdf/publ_JMMD_2007.pdf , which has some data. Jørgen (talk) 08:53, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

• There is a very curious and amazing testimony from Possevino from about 450 years ago on this matter:

The Moscovia of Antonio Possevino
The Muscovites owe the very slight knowledge of the Croatian language they possess to the fact that it displays affinities with Polish, Russian, and other similar languages. I sent a Croatian priest to Moscow and he at once acquired a good knowledge of the Muscovite language, whereas the Muscovites appear to experience considerable difficulty in mastering the Croatian language.

--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:30, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Vietnamese help

How do you say "In 2010 South Philadelphia High School Asian American students started activism, because in December 3, 2009 South Philadelphia High School students attacked their fellow South Philadelphia High Asian American classmates." in Vietnamese? I want to add information about the 2009 Asian student beating at South Philly high and the subsequent protests to the article about the Philadelphia School District in the Vietnamese Wikipedia Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 19:48, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Er..

Mustafa Farrah

Hey. I remembering having a professor by this name way back when I was in college. I thought it might have been a Muslim country name which is why I was surprised when I met him and he was very pale, Eastern European in appearance, with brown hair. He spoke with what seemed to be a thick Slavic accent, but the best I could do was eliminate Russian. He had no other idiosyncrasies (of dress, appearance, speech, etc.) that I could tell. I never thought to ask him, but now i'm wondering What ethnicity might he have been (where was he from)? 72.128.82.131 (talk) 23:30, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Bosnia? Albania? Lots of Muslims even from the Middle East "look European" though, and there are lots of Muslims elsewhere in Europe too, so without any other info, he could have been from anywhere. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:09, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There are more Muslims living in Russia than in any other part of Europe. According to Islam in Europe there's 1.5 million Muslims living in Moscow alone. So, he could have very well been Russian. There are also many Slavic Muslims in other parts of Eastern Europe, the Bosniaks make up the bulk of the people living in Bosnia and Herzegovina and they're mostly Muslims. It should also be noted that Iranian people are an Indo-European/Caucasian people closely related to other European peoples and represent a huge number of people; they're also largely Muslim. --Jayron32 00:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Ethnic Russians who are Muslims are very very few in fact, maybe a couple of thousands. Nearly all "Russian" Muslims are not Russians.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:25, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

So what's your point? Nobody said he was an ethnic Russian. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:06, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

The question was also about ethnicity, I've just cleared up the matter. There are not two different words for "citizens of Russia" and "ethnic Russians", so many foreigners do not keep or see this distinction.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:09, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

He could have been a Chechen, for instance. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:20, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Famously Mustafa was the name of the founder of modern Turkey, so it seems likely that the professor's name could be Turkic in origin, and Turks ruled from China to Vienna, so all across Eurasia. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:18, 1 February 2013 (UTC)