Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 July 18

Language desk
< July 17	<< Jun | July | Aug >>	July 19 >

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.

July 18

the phrase "from safety point of view"

I am really confused about the phrase "from safety point of view." The usage made in the sentence: "For safety point of view skin sensitivity test may be performed before any AGS injections" seems wrong to me, but I also cannot find any example of the use of the earlier phrase on Google. Can someone help?182.74.40.58 (talk) 07:32, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

"From the point of view of safety, a skin sensitivity test may be performed before any AGS injections" GilHamiltonTheArm (talk) 07:47, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

As an editor, I'd have replaced the rather anthropomorphic "point of view" with "considerations" or "aspect". -- Deborahjay (talk) 12:25, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

You can't have "[modifier] point of view" immediately after from. It has be "from a [modifier] point of view" or "from the point of view of [modifier]". "For safety point of view" is just wrong. That said, I agree with Deborahjay that a phrase involving "point of view" is poor style, since safety cannot have a point of view. A much better wording would be "The skin sensitivity test may safely be performed before any AGS injections." Marco polo (talk) 12:46, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

(changing hats, now former medical secretary) Actually, Marco, I read it otherwise and closer to the original. Suggested rewording: "With regard for [patient] safety, a skin sensitivity test may [ or should] be performed before any AGS injections." -- Deborahjay (talk) 13:09, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't have a medical background. You are probably right, Deborahjay, though the original wording is very unclear. Marco polo (talk) 13:15, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Horticulture for edibles only

The MS Encarta dico defines Horticulture as: botany gardening cultivation of gardens: the science, skill, or occupation of cultivating plants, especially flowers, fruit, and vegetables, in gardens. Is there a term for gardening to grow fruits and vegetables, excluding fruits that grow on trees? (Bushes OK.) I've read through the subctopics of Category:Horticulture and haven't found anything quite right. -- Deborahjay (talk) 12:23, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, Fructiculture would be a regularly formed term (which I have just coined from first principles) that should be instantly understandable by anyone who knows what Horticulture means, even if they'd never encountered it before. Googling (actually Binging) the term shows that it is in use. Of course, it would apply specifically to fruit only. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 13:14, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

The term "market garden" suggests that gardens (in the widest sense) can be for commercial production too. Alansplodge (talk) 14:11, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Um, but this isn't for commercial but rather, home consumption or co-op/barter. That's why I rejected the similar "truck garden." The closest thing I can imagine is some variation on the "victory garden" for the locavore, no-chemicals, grow-your-own movement, with zero combustion-engine emissions from furrow to table. -- Deborahjay (talk) 17:39, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Recognizing foreign accents in writing

Maybe accent isn't the best word for what I have in mind. I mean the mistakes or odd choices of words that non-native users of English make because they use the rules of their first language. In spoken English you can often tell which part of the world a person comes from by their accent, but is this also true for written English? Can a person with English as their first language recognize that they are reading a text by a non-native user, and if so how do you recognize the different "accents"? Sjö (talk) 14:52, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

"Accent" is indeed probably not the best word here, as it refers only to pronunciation features, but errors that are characteristic of learners with a particular first language can indeed often be recognized. German writers will transfer German word-order patterns into English; Russians will leave out articles; Chinese writers will switch between tenses in unexpected ways; Indians will use features of formal and metaphorical English in ways different from native speakers; that sort of thing. In language acquisition research there has been a lot of discussion about the different ways errors in production arise either from interference of one's first language, or from general mechanisms of language learning and imperfect language use that are independent of the first language. Our article on Error analysis (linguistics) has a bit more on that. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:01, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

[I remember a similar question from a few years ago, but in about five minutes of searching I have not found it in the Archives.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:42, 18 July 2013 (UTC)]

One feature of Indian English that I was reminded of while editing a WP article today was the tendency to use progressive verb forms where British and American speakers use simple forms. (Here's a student paper on the topic.) The example I encountered was "The Outer Ring Road is passing through the village", rather than "... passes through the village". Deor (talk) 16:33, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

My favourite example is German: the way to build sentences is simply different, and it is readily recognizable; if you know German, you will see it on the spot......let me mull this over a bit, and I will try not to drift into clichés here, but something like: "You have the right here" would be a typical sentence. Lectonar (talk) 16:44, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Our article language transfer describes the phenomenon. In my experience, a native speaker can usually tell when a text has been written by a non-native speaker, but can't pinpoint the original language. That's because features like the use of tenses are difficult for learners from all language backgrounds, who can fall into similar errors. For example, speakers of Romance languages write "When I will arrive" instead of "When I arrive" because their languages use a future tense in such clauses. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:20, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

German speakers writing in English also often use the progressive present forms where native speakers use simple present, as in the Indian example above. However, I think that this is also common among speakers of other European languages that lack a progressive aspect. A distinguishing feature of German speakers in written English is their use of German punctuation rules, which state that every subordinate clause must be marked off by a comma. Here is an example of how that works: "I think, that it would be better, to go by train instead of car."

By the way, it is also possible for native speakers of English to recognize different national varieties of English in writing. Spelling, word choice, and subtle grammatical differences separate U.S. English from British English and other forms of English. Word choice and grammar are nearly identical between U.S. English and Canadian English, but in that case, spelling distinguishes the two. Marco polo (talk) 17:29, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

• Dialogue writers often depend on the fact that a character's variety of World Englishes comes across on the written page. (In reading English in formal contexts from India, such "sound" of the language does seem to come through). Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:34, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

• As a sidethought: here in Brussels there is a standing joke, actually around for years. Question: What is Europe's future language? Answer: bad English! And it is true; I sometimes prefer to listen to professional translators although the speeches are supposed to be in English. Lectonar (talk) 17:38, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

From my personal experience, when you start to really study a second language or interact with speakers of another language, it becomes easier to pick up on various trends. The French, for example, are often tempted to use the word "normally" in a bit of a different way than an English speaker would and might prefer to write "I have gone to the store today" instead of "I went to the store today". I also notice subtle word order variation - perhaps something like "I see often the dog" instead of "I often see the dog". I think that it is also easier to avoid people detecting your native language in writing than in speaking - if you can write a perfectly normal sentence in another language, no native speaker will read it with an accent. Falconus^{p t c} 06:34, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Those French adverbs always trip me up! French also uses "évidemment", "eventuellement" and "exceptionnellement" differently than in English ("the office is exceptionally closed today"). Adam Bishop (talk) 14:55, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Sjö: Of course if text is written in incorrect English it is often possible to tell the writer was not a native speaker of the language. The specific "cues" depend on what the author's first language is. People have given examples above of some of the common mistakes made by writers of some language backgrounds; another, for example, is that speakers of East Asian languages like Korean or Chinese often have trouble with articles ("a", "the") in English, omitting them when they should use them or using them when they omit them. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:07, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

There are certain clues. I can often guess a German writer - things like the use of the words "actualise" and "somehow" or the phrase "on the other hand side" are very Denglish. There may even be some capitalised nouns, and ts and ds confused if it isn't proofread. Polish omits articles and adds articles in the wrong places, like many other languages. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 08:25, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

greek

δελφῖνος or Δελφίδος? and why in nom. the end is δελφίς? ν\δ falls before σ? why ι? --84.108.6.126 (talk) 16:20, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I understanded. Never mind. --84.108.6.126 (talk) 16:25, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Why the ν not falls from this word ποιμήν (ποιμέν-ος) but in δελφίς (δελφῖν-ος), it's not?--84.108.6.126 (talk) 16:41, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

These are covered in Ancient Greek nouns#Single-stems in an, en, in, on and the following section, but the reasons are not explained. I am no expert on Greek, but from my knowledge of Latin and other IE languages, I would say that it is because ποιμέν- is thematic (i.e., for most purposes the stem is treated as vowel-final) whereas δελφῖν- is a consonant-final stem. In the latter case the original ending *-ινς was simplified, as in many other examples in the article I linked to . For comparable phenomena in Latin, consider 'senatus' ("senate"), genitive 'senatūs' (stem 'senatu-') as opposed to 'miles' ("soldier"), genitive 'militis' (stem 'milit-'). --ColinFine (talk) 19:44, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

After the classical era, nom. δελφίν does occur. Thompson's Greek Grammar (§31) talks about this declension previously being systematic in having the lengthened form (ην, ων) in the f. and m. nom. sg., strong form (εν, ον) in some cases, and then a weak form (ν/α, ν/α) in the rest. This declension then broke up with different words taking different forms for their stems. It appears that all the nouns which had a ιων/ιον/ιν ended up with the weak form ιν and then drop the ν entirely for the nom. sg. What's really weird is ὁ κτείς, κτενός comb. I don't think that has an explanation. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 20:47, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Chinese sentence containing multiple inflections of one word

This sounds a dubious, but a friend who visited China told me that a person speaking Chinese could make an entire sentence by just using different inflections of one word, "ma". Is there any truth to this? --157.254.210.11 (talk) 19:54, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

If by "inflection" you mean intonation curves, then it's not quite wrong. Chinese is a tonal language, so the same syllable will carry a different meaning according to which of five tonal patterns you pronounce it in. Moreover, Mandarin Chinese has a very large number of homophone words, i.e. words that sound the same (even with the same tone, or with different tones) but mean different things. So there are indeed dozens of words that all sound like "ma" (here's a list in an online dictionary: [1]), and you could certainly form a sentence that consists entirely of those. One example that's often used to annoy beginning learners would be "妈妈骂马吗", which is pronounced "māma mà mǎ ma", and roughly means "is mummy scolding the horse?" Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:11, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes that must be it! My friend mentioned something about "mother" and "horse"! --157.254.210.11 (talk) 20:46, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess this example is particularly popular because it can be used to demonstrate to the beginner not only the importance of tone in the pronunciation of Chinese, but also one important principle about the writing system: all four Han characters used in this sentence contain the same easily recognizable graphical component, a so-called radical, which is derived from the most basic of these characters – the one for "horse" – but which in the other characters merely indicates the phonetic value. That's a principle that is observed in many (though not all) Chinese characters. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:00, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

See List of linguistic example sentences#Mandarin Chinese (version of 22:51, 10 July 2013).

—Wavelength (talk) 20:14, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, Confucius said a proverb that all had to do with the "fu" pronunciation. Sneazy (talk) 21:25, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Was that the one that goes, "Three Chinese cheers for [whoever]: Fu-ee! Fu-ee! Fu-ee!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:56, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't get this one. Can someone explain? Is "Fu-ee" somehow like "Hurrah"? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:27, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

No, it's the opposite. "Fooey", as it's typically spelled, is a G-rated "curse" word. Irony, as in the expression "Bronx cheer". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

See also Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den uhhlive (talk) 21:31, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I remember reading a Chinese tongue twister pertaining to moms riding horses, the horses being slow, and the mother scolding the horse :P ☯ Bonkers The Clown \(^_^)/ Nonsensical Babble ☯ 14:41, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's in fact the version cited in our List of linguistic example sentences#Mandarin Chinese. But there are two words in it that aren't "ma". Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:56, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

It's no wonder, a "classic" at kindergartens that offer Chinese. Yea, "qi" and "man". The tongue twister actually has more parts to it, including a little girl squeezing the udders of the cow... ☯ Bonkers The Clown \(^_^)/ Nonsensical Babble ☯ 15:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

For tongue twisters, see http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/#zh.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:54, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

157.254.210.1: As Future Perfect mentioned, your friend is not correct to say that the words in that sentence are "different inflections" (or tones) of the same word, "ma". mā, má, mǎ, and mà (the diacritic marks indicate different tones) are entirely different words; the fact that tone isn't something we use in English to distinguish words doesn't mean those syllables in another language are all the same word. Likewise, some languages don't use "l" and "r" to distinguish between different words, but that doesn't mean the English words "rice" and "lice" are the same word just because speakers of some other languages have a hard time hearing the difference. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:13, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

"Defect" the verb (as in "to join the enemy") and "defect" the noun (as in "a fault") is an example of two different words with the same spelling in English. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:41, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

That's called a homograph. And because these two words are also pronounced differently (the stress is on different syllables), they are also heteronyms. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:02, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

See also One-syllable article for a list of such phrases.--Wikimedes (talk) 21:04, 20 July 2013 (UTC)