Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 September 5

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September 5

"This note is legal tender..."

Shouldn't it be "This note is a legal tender for all debts, public and private" on US banknotes instead of actual "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"? Is there some reason why the article "a" is missing? --93.174.25.12 (talk) 08:30, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Au contraire, is there some reason you feel it should be there? Legal tender should be enlightening. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:00, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Isn't that because tender is an uncountable noun? — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:22, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

• Otherwise called a mass noun, that is. --65.94.51.64 (talk) 04:32, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

It is uncountable. You could use "money" instead of "legal tender" in that phrase with the exact same results: "This note is money" and not "This note is a money". --Xuxl (talk) 11:41, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

To clarify, the expression "a legal tender" can be used in some contexts, and our article uses it 5 times. But in the sense of whether a pretty piece of paper with certain markings and designs can be generally used to purchase goods or services, that is not such a context. When you take the piece of paper to a shop and engage in a transaction in which you acquire something and in return offer the paper to the shopkeeper as payment, that action is an example of "a legal tender". But the note itself remains just "legal tender". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 13:32, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Capitalization of German nouns

As German nouns#Orthography notes, "German is the only major language to capitalize its nouns." The practice seems archaic, even anachronistic, to me, and my gut feeling is that the practice should be dying out. Is there any sign that this is already happening? Is decapitalization being seriously discussed anywhere in Germany? --Viennese Waltz 08:47, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

No, not seriously. There are some splinter groups who want to change that, and some mischiefs constructing sentences that would then be ambiguous (famous example: "Helft den armen vögeln!"), but that's it. --KnightMove (talk) 08:58, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

But to correct myself: As capitalization is inefficient for writing SMS etc., you see people (especially youngsters) not using capitalization in IT conversations. However, this is still highly unpopular for the vast majority of people. --KnightMove (talk) 09:00, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

And correcting myself once more: Discussions have been serious enough, especially for the spelling reform 1996-2006. But the majority of experts maintained the capitalization. --KnightMove (talk) 10:46, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

This practice is not archaic, it's older versions of German that do not capitalize. It is true that capitalization when chatting may be too formal or even odd for your conversation partner, but this can be said for all languages using Latin letters. The main reason is the laziness to hit the shift key. Language purists' reasons to preserve capitalization include less ambiguity when capital letters distinguish nouns from verbs, better legibility and the fact that Germans are proud of their language being special. Spelling reforms actually don't cover capitalization doubts except the case when most people are unsure if adjectives describing proper nouns should be also capitalized, but cases when you don't know if something should be written in one word or two words. Most people don't question the purpose of capitalization regardless whether they use it or not and it doesn't matter in handwriting at all. German orthography has very strict rules, especially those concerning interpunction. In most cases you can't just add or leave out commas otherwise it's a mistake. One comma mistake can lower half a grade in a school dictation test. It's not only the young who don't care or don't memorize the rules learned in school, mistakes are common in advertising and it's very rare to find absolutely correct labelings when you walk around in the city. Capitalization is a small problem compared to other spelling issues and Germans themselves are confused. --2.245.127.9 (talk) 19:16, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Is this correct English?

An error message reads: Current Distributor is not allowed distributor to see [those items], meaning that he does not belong to a subgroup of distributors authorized to see the items. Is this correct English and good style? --KnightMove (talk) 09:03, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Is the message actually addressed to the distributor himself? If so, maybe use the second rather than the third person. Also maybe change "allowed" to "authorized" or "permitted". So it would read "You are not authorized to see those items". --Viennese Waltz 09:40, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

"Current Distributor is not allowed distributor ..." is clearly ungrammatical. It isn't clear to me why the word distributor appears again after the word allowed. Without making too many changes to the existing message, it could be rewritten grammatically as follows: "The current distributor is not allowed to see [those items]." — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:17, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I just realized what the original sentence is trying to say. It might be rephrased as follows: "The current distributor is not an authorized distributor, and therefore is not allowed to see [those items]." However, the version I mentioned in my earlier post is shorter and conveys pretty much the same meaning. — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:20, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Not really. No, it doesn't. The expression "an allowed distributor" is quite unidiomatic, but even so, it needs the indefinite article "an". "A permitted distributor" would be better. But tagging this on to the front of another verb like "to see" is egregious. It's not really acceptable to combine "He is a permitted distributor" + "He is not permitted to see those items" to get "He is not a permitted distributor to see those items". Using "allowed" instead of "permitted" just digs the hole even deeper. The result is readers scratching their heads, meaning that the transmission of meaning (= communication) has not occurred. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 13:24, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Huh? Jack, it's not entirely clear to me which version you're referring to when you say "no, it doesn't". But if, as I suspect, you're referring to the version in SMUconlaw's first post, then nowhere does he suggest rephrasing as "He is not a permitted distributor to see those items." --Viennese Waltz 15:29, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Was Jack responding to KnightMove's original post? — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:36, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, he was. I (he) confused you with the OP. I'm not sure to whom I should apologise first and the more abjectly. :) I read "my earlier post" as the OP's Current Distributor is not allowed distributor to see [those items]. In my mind, my indentation was perfect and self-explanatory. (Aside: Mind, take a holiday, OK?) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:31, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I can imagine that (an) allowed distributor is standard jargon in that biz, whatever it is, but even so the following to clause is odd; it's a sort of zeugma, using allowed both as an adjective (distinguishing a type of distributor) and as a participle (which in this sense would normally follow distributor). —Tamfang (talk) 08:55, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Assassinate vs. murder

Just rising up out of a discussion, how important a person do you have to be to be asssassinated,rather than just plain murdered? Assassination just states 'a prominent figure',but that's rather subjective-it does to be mainly political or royal figures it refers to.So does a mayor qualify?A councillor?A Congressman? We need some sort of guideline-perhaps the Guild of Assassins will help! Lemon martini (talk) 11:13, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The folks who made List of assassinated American politicians certainly thought that mayors, congressmen, councillors, judges, and the like qualify. Perhaps what makes a killing an assassination is that the motive involves the public life of the target; I don't think a wife's killing her husband for personal reasons would qualify, no matter who he was. Deor (talk) 11:35, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Per Deor, assassination is generally used for public figures who are killed for their public life; a person killed because of a political stance or something like that. It is often (but not always) used for politicians; non-politicians can be assassinated for political stances as well, for example Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi are described as assassinated though they did not hold political office; however they were killed because of the political stances they held, and were public figures. It is the motivation behind the killing, not the job of the victim, that determines the usage of assassination. For a counter-example, John Lennon's death is sometimes described as an assassination, but Wikipedia uses the word murder here, because there was not any political motivation for his killing. I'm also drawing a blank on politicians killed for personal reasons; but if there was one, I'd think it wouldn't be described as an assassination. --Jayron32 12:05, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

There's no proven political connection, but Lennon was spreading peace all over the place. The political and economic status quo depended on war. If it was enough to worry the FBI, it's enough to make enough of his legions of followers figure Chapman wasn't just some random nut. I'm not saying I know what happened, just how I can see how they can see it. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:21, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

This is getting a little off-topic, but ... really? What exactly was John Lennon doing in 1980 to "spread peace all over the place"? I remember him as being not really all that relevant by then, getting covered in the press for an at-last-happy personal life, which is great but not obviously a unique contribution to peace, his last notable musical contribution being a lovely tune to which he set a paean to the most banal materialist outlook on existence. --Trovatore (talk) 21:44, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Per the above, I understand that an assassination occurs when the motive for the killing is non-personal, the assassin wants to kill the victim for what he/she represents, and what he/she has done in public. The assassin might not know the victim personally, and might not ever even have met him/her. On the other hand, a murder occurs when the motive for the killing is personal, the murderer holds a personal grudge for the victim, something which does not concern what the victim represents, only his/her own person. JIP | Talk 00:13, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

OTOH, politicians who are killed by their rivals are often said to be assassinated even though it's possible rival's motivations may be more about trying to advance their political careers forpersonal reasons rather than a genuinely held believe that there was anything really wrong with the political stance of the rivals or that they would so much better. To give some examples without commenting on the motivations, Byron Looper or [1]. Nil Einne (talk) 21:15, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Ah indeed we do have-the first one that sprang to mind was Harvey Milk and that's described as an assassination-I'm not sure how much you'd separate out Dan White's reasons for killing him to be 'personal' or 'political' though? Lemon martini (talk) 19:37, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

He was a political rival of White's. Seems like a political motivation to me. --Jayron32 21:01, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, he also felt personally betrayed by Milk and Moscone, though. Moscone had promised to re-appoint White if he changed his mind about re-joining the supes, and when White tried to cash that promise in, Milk talked Moscone out of it. I don't dispute the word "assassination", but L.m. is quite right that the two strands are hard to prise apart. --Trovatore (talk) 21:16, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

For the first 15 or so years of my life, I figured murderers were the ones who got caught, and assassins were sneakier. That's clearly not the common usage, but it worked for me, at least as far as my own thinking went. When writing for general audiences, it seems the general rule is presidents can't possibly be "murdered", even by people looking to impress Jodie Foster, rather than change policy. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:16, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Issue with collective noun combined with a list

Hello!

I am editing a company manual. Within it is the following:

"Jewelry, such as rings, chains, and watches, are not permitted in the production area."

I have read some info regarding collective nouns here, as well as other places. The decision would be clear to me if there was not a list set aside in comma. "Jewelry is not permitted in the production area.", although the site states that both "is" and "are" are correct grammatically, and have different meanings! Jewelry is acting "like a group" in this case.

However, again the list of what is considered jewelry makes the situation more awkward; Jewelry is singular but the list contains plural elements. I admit it may be a case where the grammatically correct way may sound strange to the average person's ear.

Which is correct? May i re-write it in a way to avoid this disaster in the first place, have great stylistic flow, and still mention those things considered as Jewelry? I tried to think how to re-arrange the sentence but came up with no good result so far. THANKS!

216.173.144.188 (talk) 13:21, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The simplest solution is to append the words "Items of" to the beginning of the sentence. Problem solved. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 13:28, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

This would change Jewelry to a plural, where "are" is then permitted, regardless of the side mention. I will think over the style and flow of this, but at first glance it looks like an excellent solution! Thanks!

216.173.144.188 (talk) 13:32, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, a simpler and less wordy solution is to correct "are" to "is". The words "such as rings, chains, and watches" form a parenthetical phrase that does not affect the grammar of the rest of the sentence. If you like, you could make this more obvious by using actual parentheses (or dashes) around it instead of commas. --65.94.51.64 (talk) 04:37, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

You could change such as to including. —Tamfang (talk) 08:33, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

But the verb still has to be "is". --65.94.51.64 (talk) 04:56, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

"Laglig" vs "legal" in Swedish

I visited the Swedish Customs Museum in Kungsholmen, Stockholm, in the middle of July. There I saw a sign saying Tullverket - Förenklar det legala. Förhindrar det illegala. ("The Customs - Makes legal things easier. Prevents illegal things.") The choice of words surprised me. Why legal and illegal instead of laglig and olaglig? As I understand it, Swedish is one of those languages which prefers its native words over loanwords, like Finnish (although Finnish does it to a far greater extent), but unlike English. Is there some difference between legal/illegal and laglig/olaglig in Swedish? JIP | Talk 23:38, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

See linguistic triplet: e.g. legal, loyal, lawful. (Compare eagle, oil, awful.) μηδείς (talk) 00:23, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Giving the phenomenon a name doesn't really answer the question. —Tamfang (talk) 08:32, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Your point is unclear. Is the article unhelpful? Are you suggesting I made up the name. The expectation here is to point to the article or an adequate source, and that article is quite helpful. μηδείς (talk) 18:46, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

The OP's question is not "Is this phenomenon known vs unique to this set of words?" but "Is there a difference in meaning" (implying "and if so what is it?"). —Tamfang (talk) 06:15, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

It's probably one of scope, context, or prestige, as the article explains. You seem strangely focused on criticizing my link, rather than actually answering question at the level of concreteess you feel appropriate.

And you seem strangely focused on defending your unhelpful answer, rather than ... Yeah, I should chide you on your talk page rather than here. That was lazy of me. If I had a useful answer to the OP, I'd give it. —Tamfang (talk) 07:36, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

We have the same pairs of synonyms in Norwegian, but in your example, the opposite choice seems better. I would have chosen: Tollverket - Forenkler lovlig virksomhet. Forhindrer det ulovlige. Legal/Illegal are rather rarely used in contemporary Norwegian, except for "Illegal" in the context of world war II. "Illegal" is used about activities that the occupants deemed illegal, but that the average non-collaborating Norwegian considered the right thing to do. "Illegal aktivitet" = "resistance activity" in that context. I did a site search for "legal" at aftenposten.no, which confirmed my impression that "legal" is used in a more technical sense, particularly when something is legal but not necessarily the right thing to do. "Legale rusmidler" (legal recreational drugs), "Legal abort" (legal abortion), etc., and assertions that something is "fullt ut legalt" (fully legal) when the activity referred to may be morally questionable. If the distinction is similar in Swedish, Tullverket's choice seems odd, so the connotations may be different in Swedish. --109.189.65.217 (talk) 11:37, 6 September 2014 (UTC) (NorwegianBlue, not logged in).

Native speaker here. I think it's a play on the two meanings of "legal" in Swedish. It means both "lawful" and "pertaining to the law" so what they're saying is that they want to simplyfy that which is legal, by simplifying the legalities connected to crossing the Swedish borders. Sjö (talk) 06:37, 7 September 2014 (UTC)