Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 April 12

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April 12

Arabic question: Russian School Dubai

What is the Arabic in http://www.dubairuschool.com/sites/default/files/styles/img_1170_204/public/images/slideshows/1.jpg?itok=eKXwkfHU?

It is for Russian International School in Dubai. Thanks! WhisperToMe (talk) 09:25, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

المدرسة الحولیة الروسیة ---Omidinist (talk) 06:17, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you :) WhisperToMe (talk) 17:58, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Artificial & Art

Are these two words from the same root?--BoldEditor (talk) 13:05, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 13:08, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

artifex, artifice, artisan, Ars gratia artis etc. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:08, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Think of "art" as equivalent to "skill", and it covers everything. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:33, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

The terms articulate, arm, and arthropod are Latin, English and Greek cognates, and the PIE root means something like "fitted together". μηδείς (talk) 22:29, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Words that every native speaker must know/extra vocabulary

Can we separate the vocabulary that every native speaker know from words that only some speakers know? Words like table, chair, walk, window, and so on, cannot be left out of the vocabulary of a normal person. However, if you don't know laconic, voracious, paradox, and so on, you could still be a native speaker (although you won't be a well-educated one). Given a list of words by frequency, where would we draw a line between these two groups? Can we calculate the probability that a native speaker knows a word at least? That would obvious give the words in the first group a probability of 100% obviously, but do linguist research such things for less frequent words?--Llaanngg (talk) 13:08, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Swadesh list may be of interest. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 13:47, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

These pages use the term core vocabulary (just a redirect to Swadesh list), and might give you some leads - this one has several academic refs [1], and this one has some decent conceptual info [2]. Here are a couple other research articles that seem relevant [3] [4]. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:58, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

As for the actual lists of word frequencies by language, you might find this info in cryptography research, as it can be quite useful for breaking codes that replace one word with another. There would also be frequency differences in different types of speech, as some words are only used in casual speech while others might only be used in written forms of a language. StuRat (talk) 17:04, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

When I learned Pitman Shorthand, I had a book of the 100 most common words and the 500 most common words, and I had to learn these as they had been given their own special outlines (logograms I think they were called)to facilitate speedy notetaking. So a place to look would be in the shorthand of whatever language you were using. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:40, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

See wikt:Wiktionary:Frequency lists.—Wavelength (talk) 16:05, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Also see Up Goer Five. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:25, 13 April 2015 (UTC)