Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 July 19

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July 19

a warm muskmelon shade

What color is a warm muskmelon shade? Is it a kind of green or yellow? Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.249.220.237 (talk) 03:36, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Hard to say. It would depend on context, specifically the culture of the person speaking; muskmelons come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. In some places, the actual word "muskmelon" would be unfamiliar, and in other places, it would likely refer to only a specific cultivar of muskmelon: I would say that it seems likely to be referring to the color of the flesh of the muskmelon, but that can vary widely: in the U.S. for example, the two most common varieties are honeydew, which are a pale green, and cantaloupe, which is a pale orange. So, we can't say for certain without knowing which variety of muskmelon the speaker was talking about. --Jayron32 03:45, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

The context is: "She has some special fondness for lilies of a warm muskmelon shade or a pale lemon yellow." Based on the sentence, can it be judged that "muskmelon" refers to a light yellow? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.249.220.237 (talk) 04:10, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

You can also think about warm and cool colors. This article goes into that a bit. Bus stop (talk) 04:16, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

This[[1]] site again. Myrvin (talk) 08:54, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

My local language (1950s NYC; Los Angeles 1960-84)) distinguishes the two most prevalent types by name: the cantaloupe (light orange) and honeydew (light green). Note that the lead paragraph of the Cantaloupe page gives "muskmelon" as an alternative moniker, though in my experience this would be regional for areas with which I'm not personally familiar (to be noted on Talk:Cantaloupe). The "day lily" was (is) profusely grown, at least in the U.S. subtropical belt, and popular in public and private landscaping. It has light yellow and "tawny orange" variants. I suggest this is what the author and character intend. And, please note: when RefDesk editors ask for clarification of context regarding a book and character, it would pertain to the author's and character's regional origins. -- Deborahjay (talk) 05:52, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

flutter

I am not sure whether "flutter" in the following context means "to MOVE lightly and quickly" or "to FALL with a light trembling motion"? The context is: "The occasional paper tag fluttering from a seed pod with the date and record of a cross showed that she was an amateur hybridizer." I want your opinion. THANK YOU! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.249.210.225 (talk) 08:21, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

More like the first one.[2] It's like "float". In fact, remember Muhammed Ali's famous line: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:46, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

We are thrashing this[3] piece a bit. Anyway, the tag would be attached to the seed pod, so it isn't falling. It is fluttering in the breeze. Chambers has "3.(of a flag, etc) to flap in the air". Perhaps the questioner needs a better dictionary giving more options. Chambers has 8 meanings for the verb and 8 for the noun. Myrvin (talk) 08:48, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Mystery character

Can someone tell me what the second character in this phrase is? The phrase as a whole refers to the sage of Emei periodically changing name. Thanks, Henry^Flower 11:00, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I used this[4] site to draw this character 時, but the site says there are no usages for it. Who is this sage? Myrvin (talk) 13:26, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Google translate[5] says time. Myrvin (talk) 13:29, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

随時 means 'at any time' or 'at will'. 82.35.216.24 (talk) 14:15, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. For context, here's the original in an awful scan. If it really is just 時, then my next question is whether this in an old, or just plain weird way of writing the left part of the character, or is that normal? I've never seen it printed like that before (though my experience has mostly been with simplified characters). Henry^Flower 15:05, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Now that's definitely above my pay grade. Myrvin (talk) 15:12, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I was puzzled by that too. There are of course many radicals where it's conventional to replace a "heng" stroke at the bottom with a "ti" stroke, but I was under the impression the 日 radical wasn't one of them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:49, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Iranian & Middle East Sprachbund

Has any proposal been raised that Persian/Farsi and other Iranian languages are part of a Middle Eastern sprachbund and share traits with Semitic languages? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.244.30.139 (talk) 15:14, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

I've not encountered the actual term "sprachbund" in this context, but there certainly has been some research on language contact and language conversion in the area, both between Iranic/Semitic and between Iranic/Turkic. You might start by consulting Eva Ágnes Csató, Bo Isaaksson & Carina Jahani (eds.), Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, London 2005. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:42, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Here is a url[6] for that. Myrvin (talk) 17:46, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

More pointers: [7] (on the specific pairing of Aramaic and Kurdish), [8] (a proposal of an Araxes sprachbund involving some Semitic and Iranic languages) Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:51, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

It is well known, that Modern Persian has been heavily influenced by Arabic, because of the same Islamic tradition of the speakers of these languages. HOOTmag (talk) 00:20, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you to all. However, in response to HOOTmag, I should have been clearer, but I was speaking more about long-term phonological and morphological features, which are separate from issues like lexical borrowing from Arabic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.244.30.139 (talk) 07:09, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

The OP's reference to "long - term phonological and morphological features", as opposed to borrowing words, suggests to me that he is asking if these languages have a common ancestor. Farsi (and I believe Kurdish) are part of the Indo - European family and the others are not. Semitic languages are supposed to derive from the language spoken by Shem, one of the sons of Noah, and Hamitic languages from that spoken by Ham, another son. I believe scholars have tried to derive a common ancestor for both Aryan and Semitic languages without much success. 86.141.140.204 (talk) 17:38, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

No, the OP was speaking of a "sprachbund", which is a contact zone of languages that have become similar through mutual convergence, independent of genetic origin, and thus I understand he was (rightly) presupposing that Iranian and Semitic are not related. (As for the independent hypothesis of a long-range genetic relation, see Indo-Semitic languages and/or Nostratic, neither of which are widely accepted). Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:46, 26 July 2015 (UTC)