Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 September 27

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September 27

When someone says they have a "3 hour commute", does that normally mean each way?

I came across someone complaining about a "3 hour commute", which I thought meant 3 hours in and 3 hours back again - sounding almost impossible to live with. A bit further on in the rant it came clear that he was referring to an hour and a half travel each way, which is still quite bad but not in the "how can you live with that" category.

I have always thought that saying you had an "X hour/minute" commute meant the time taken each way. What is the correct or normal meaning of this term, or should it always be treated as ambiguous? -- Q Chris (talk) 09:13, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

It's a bit ambiguous, but I think people (at least in the US) are referring to the one-way commute. I always append each way or round trip after commute for clarity. Duoduoduo (talk) 13:11, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Number of words in Japanese versus English

Does anyone know of any reliable estimates of the number of words in common use in Japanese versus the number in common use in English? All I can find are anecdotal and wildly differing guesses by random people on forums. I understand the difficulty of defining "word" and "common use", so there is no need to point that out. I am assuming that if my question has an affirmative answer then sensible decisions about those things would have been made. 86.160.222.175 (talk) 13:35, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

The Daijiten (大辭典 "Great/Comprehensive Dictionary", Heibonsha 1934–36), edited by Shimonaka Yasaburō (下中彌三郎), is the largest kokugo dictionary ever published. The original 26-volume edition, which is still available in condensed versions, entered over 700,000 headwords, listed by pronunciation, and covered a wide variety of Japanese vocabulary.
The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (Shogakukan, 1972, 1976) is the modern equivalent of the Daigenkai and Daijiten. This multivolume historical dictionary enters about 500,000 headwords, and is currently the most complete reference work for the Japanese language.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, together with its 1993 Addenda Section, includes some 470,000 entries. The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, reports that it includes a similar number.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 15:10, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Can you please not use that visual effect in future, Lüboslóv? I find that text really hard to read; I'm reduced to having to read it word by word. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:15, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, you've really surprised me. I've never thought that Courier can be hard to read for anybody. I just wanted to show that this was not my text. I don't know how to make compact citations then.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:26, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

It must be the combination of Courier and underlining that I have a challenge with. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:35, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it depends upon browsers. In my FF the text is in Courier and the background is a little bit grayer, that's all, not any underlining. Of course, I could use italics but I much more hate reading texts in italics, than in Courier (the latter is not so bad as seems, actually).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 08:27, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Per MOS:Blockquote, the preferred technique is to use the raw <blockquote> HTML tag, or the {{Quote}} template. Tevildo (talk) 08:53, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

These make only an indent. In places with many indents (like discussion pages) it is not so convenient.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 10:18, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

But the OP is asking about words "in common use". As he says, there are various ways of defining that. But I am pretty sure studies have been done on questions like: In some collection of certain magazines over a certain period of time, how many distinct words appear? Or how many appear more than say five times? Of course, the researcher has to decide whether words formed by adding prefixes or suffixes to other words count as separate words. And when one combination of spelling (or character in Japanese) and pronunciation can have more than one meaning, does that count as more than one word? What if the meanings are similar but not identical -- more than one word or the same word?

So it's impossible to do it without making some arbitrary decisions that affect the numerical results. But I think it's been done by analyzing some common corpus. Anyone know a source on this? Duoduoduo (talk) 16:13, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

In googling I see a lot of references to Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue" containing estimates of the number of words in common use for various languages. The number usually given for English is 200,000 but I couldn't figure out if he gave a number for Japanese. Does anyone have the book? Taknaran (talk) 20:19, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

200,000 is surely an absurdly high number for any reasonable definitions of "word" and "common use". 86.160.222.175 (talk) 20:54, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Mother Tongue is an entertaining book by an entertaining journalist. It is not a reliable source for anything about linguistics. --ColinFine (talk) 23:14, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I think I read one time that the New York Times uses about 25,000 words, but that most native English speakers go through most of life with about 10,000 words. Sorry, no citation. Duoduoduo (talk) 23:58, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I am ideally looking for an actual English-Japanese comparison, rather than a figure for English from one place and a figure for Japanese from another. I want some confidence that the comparison has been sensibly made, given the mentioned difficulties of definition and the fact that the two languages are so different. 86.160.222.175 (talk) 01:29, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

For English there are a lot of estimates for both written and oral speech (by Paul Nation et al.). It's believed that the threshold level for understanding (passive vocabulary) is from 2000-3000 (a bare minimum to understand 80-90% of any text) to 8000-9000 (up to 99% of any text) of the most frequent words. For spoken discourse these numbers are generally lower. Active vocabulary is usually twice lower than passive one. And these numbers can be applied to any language. A series of books contains the 5000 most frequently used words for every language. I cannot find information for Japanese, as I don't understand it at all, but I'm sure the result will be very close. I don't see any use for such inter-language comparisons, so I'm very doubtful somebody made such an "English-vs-Japanese" comparison.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:17, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Duoduoduo, for the size of passive vocabulary of native English speakers there was a special research, see Vocabulary#Native-language_vocabulary_size.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:21, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

• English has the largest dictionaries. It also usually has at least three terms for any object taken from native English/Norse/French/Latin/Greek and other, such as meat/flesh/viand/carnal/creatine, burg/city/civic/polity, daily/journal/du jour/diurnal/quotidian/ephemeral, heaven/sky/ceiling/celestial, shirt/skirt/chemise/tunic. These forms usually have slight differences of meaning or connotation. See linguistic doublet. Japanese has its own native vocabulary, as well as a large number of borrowings from Chinese and English. But I have never heard of it having any dictionaries as large as English. μηδείς (talk) 21:20, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Could be because of the greater diligence or greater inclusiveness of English-language dictionary compilers? 86.160.211.131 (talk) 01:04, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Let it be

Is Déjalo ser/Déjalo estar the exact translation in Spanish for this phrase? What does it really mean in English? Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 20:12, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know Spanish, but I'd say it means "Leave it alone", or "Let the situation (or the object) remain undisturbed". Duoduoduo (talk) 00:01, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

The most obvious reference I can think of is the Beatles song, and the lyrics to me mean to not fret, not worry, that everything will be OK. I don't know Spanish well enough to know what an idiomatic translation would be. I wonder, assuming the album was released in Spanish-speaking countries, whether they tried to translate it, or just... well, "let it be"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:05, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

This youtube upload[1] thinks Déjalo ser is the right way to say it. Not that that necessarily proves anything. You could make the case for either one. Ser comes the same root as "essence", while estar comes from the same root as "status". So if told to leave things as they are, are they talking about essence or status? Hard to tell. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:08, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

See Genesis 30:34 ("Let it be as you have said")

and Joshua 2:21 ("Let it be as you say")

and Matthew 3:15 ("Let it be so now"),

where in each case there are 19 English translations beginning at the top of the left-hand column, and there are five Spanish translations at the top of the right-hand column.

See also wikt:let#Verb, which includes the meaning "[t]o allow" and another meaning "[u]sed to introduce an imperative in the first or third person". The usage note says:

The use of "let" to introduce an imperative may sometimes be confused with its use, as its own imperative, in the sense of "to allow". For example, the sentence "Let me go to the store." could either be a second-person imperative of "let" (addressing someone who might prevent the speaker from going to the store) or a first-person singular imperative of "go" (not implying any such preventer).

The imperative sense is represented in some of those Spanish passages by the subjunctive mood.

—Wavelength (talk) 00:46, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

If the question is whether ser or estar is more appropriate, the spanish wikipedia says it is dejalo estar. In French I would translate the idiomatic let it be into laisse tomber. The spanish article on the song laisse tomber les filles translates it as déja tranquilas a las chicas - so perhaps déjalo tranquilo would be a good idiomatic translation? Effovex (talk) 01:04, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Laisse tomber (deja que caiga) is pretty close if Miss Bono understands that. μηδείς (talk) 03:35, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

• The simple déjalo is probably best. English wants a fuller dummy object, like déjalo ser que sea. Adding ser/estar in Spanish is forcing the unnecessary. If I were trying to translate the Beatles lyrics I would drop any attempt at being literal, and go with "Crea en sí". μηδείς (talk) 03:23, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

If you want the exact meaning in Spanish, emotionally it is No te preocupes por/sobre esto, while literally it means deja que sea. μηδείς (talk) 03:29, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

The original question did not specify the same sense as that assumed in the song "Let It Be". However, with that restriction in mind, I limited my selection of Bible passages above to ones with a similar sense, where the infinitive "be" is followed by an adverb or an adverbial phrase. However, for Bible passages where the infinitive "be" is complemented by a noun or a noun phrase or an adjective (in some cases, a participial adjective) or an adjective phrase, there are other Bible passages listed at Bible Search: let it be. You can click on any passage listed, and then click on "Multi", to see a display of translations.

Also, the infinitive "be" is complemented by a pronoun in the song "Let It Be Me". You can see the lyrics at www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/t/the_everly_brothers/let_it_be_me.html (blacklisted).

—Wavelength (talk) 05:42, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

The OP didn't specify any particular sense of the expression, so you can't automatically exclude the song. And speaking of songs, "Let It Be Me" is not the same idea as "Let It Be". "If its a friend that you need / Let it be me." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:56, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Yep, I found what I was looking for (oh, and I wasn't trying to translate The Beatles' song)... :) I've always been curious about what does Let ot be mean! :D Thanks! Miss Bono ^{[hello, hello!]} 18:10, 30 September 2013 (UTC)