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

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November 19

Beckenbauer

Could someone tell me what this name means? When I ask Google to translate it, I get some very odd results. When I type in becken, Google says it means "pool" and if I type in bauer, Google says it means "farmer" (and so do we). If I put in the whole word, beckenbauer, Google is stumped and just returns the same. As an added twist, if I type in becken-bauer with the hyphen it comes back as "Pelvic bauer" via the mobile site, but just returns "becken-bauer" while on my PC. Leaving aside why Google translate would work differently like that, what the heck is meant by "pool farmer"? Is it an idiomatic expression? 99.235.223.170 (talk) 01:07, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Becken more specifically means "basin". In this context, definitions 3 or 4 in that link make sense.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 01:22, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I suppose it follows that the pelvis could be described as a basin, but what kind of farm is that? Would it mean a farmer that's stuck with low country (so to speak)? 99.235.223.170 (talk) 02:03, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

English "pelvis" comes from Latin pelvis which meant "basin". The German meaning "pelvis" (becken), is a calque from the latin. See also, Becken (Anatomie) and the different articles listed at Becken and their English counterparts.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 02:30, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

According to https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Beckenbauer the name is not related to Becken (basin), but to backen (to bake). It was the occupational surname for a farmer who also operated a bakery. 195.75.179.149 (talk) 06:02, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Cool - thank you! 99.235.223.170 (talk) 03:00, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

German lingual usage equal words: Becken also known for sink, Waschbecken in german words waschen + Becken = wash basin. This for information only, to know it as similar to tubs.

Beckenbauer = basin maker or basin manufacturer. While Bauer or Landwirt is the German word for farmer and bauen = to build. bauer is former not current derive from bauen. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 23:33, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Part of speech statistics

I managed to find statistics about which parts of speech are most common in English, depending the context: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/55486/what-are-the-percentages-of-the-parts-of-speech-in-english. Are similar statistics available for other languages? Munci (talk) 01:08, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

You can find this information using a text corpus. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:58, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

That's a start. So I could use the German Reference Corpus to find such statistics about German for example. Any idea how to insert that into the dictionary application Toolbox for example? Munci (talk) 16:11, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Cant be arsed

What does this phrase mean?>--178.104.65.199 (talk) 03:44, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

If you had typed it into Google, result #1 would have been this. --Jayron32 03:47, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I suppose the OP couldn't be arsed. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 03:57, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I had looked this up a few years ago with no web resul;ts whatever, so this time I just couldnt be arsed.--178.104.65.199 (talk) 13:35, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh no, sorry that was another phrase.--178.104.65.199 (talk) 13:36, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Note: the phrase is often abbreviated to CBA TBH (to be honest) and frequently contracted further to the just the single word "seebs". Martinevans123 (talk) 13:45, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Because they can't be arsed even to say the abbreviation? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:22, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

So it doesnt mean an anti homosexual man than, Jack?--178.104.65.199 (talk) 00:53, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

What kind of a half-arsed question is that? Akld guy (talk) 05:41, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

It's not even a comprehensible English sentence. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:23, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Rather a recent innovation this; I recall the first time that I heard it in the late 1980s, I thought that the speaker was saying "can't be asked" which made no sense. Actually "arsed" doesn't make much more sense either. Alansplodge (talk) 09:39, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I've seen the "asked" variation as a bowdlerised, pre-watershed sort of usage in the UK. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:13, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Surely fucked preceded arsed here? And didn't it start out as very lowly and polite bothered? At least in jolly old proper UK Queen's English? Martinevans123 (talk) 23:58, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

To be honest, when I was working in Japan at a language centre, there was an American who would work one day with me, and he'd been told to do something by the manager which was not in the contract, so I said to him, "I couldn't be arsed doing that!" and he said "I couldn't be bothered!", totally missing the point that I hadn't said 'asked', but rather 'arsed'. I take it it's not familiar to our friends over the pond? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 15:34, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

It's not used in America, that I know of. Googling the subject leads to various theories, but one that fits is that the "can't be" is short for "can't be bothered to", i.e. can't be bothered to get up off it and do whatever someone's proposing to do. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:06, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

It's not heard here, and even though I watch more British TV (when I can get it) than American, I would have assumed a non-rhotic speaker was saying "asked". Americans routinely leave out the k (it assimilates to the dentals) leaving "assed" /æst/ for asked/æskt/. μηδείς (talk) 17:23, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Haha, yes Lauren is quite an archetype of yoof cultcha. But if you've read the book, why not listen to the song? Or am I just reminiscing here?Martinevans123 (talk) 17:47, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• I just can't be arsed to comment on this thread .... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.128.129 (talk) 01:17, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Possible origin (archaic): I can't be tasked (to do that). Akld guy (talk) 02:12, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd say that was almost possible. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:46, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I need the translation of the following English sentence into some languages:

The languages are as following (Please native speakers only):

Spanish, French, German, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Amharic.

The sentence is:

Good morning to all of you, welcome to the five-day-course of our project - Sapehl - for fulfilling individual potential to attain excellence, version two thousand fifteen.

By "course" I mean (of course): a period of learning.

If you could give also the phonetic scripts (which is more important to me), whether in IPA or in any other way easily understood by English readers, I will appreciate it. 10:55, 19 November 2015 (UTC) 77.125.152.2 (talk)

Perhaps you could translate "personal talents of excellence" into English first, to give us a clue? 78.98.70.30 (talk) 10:58, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I've changed it. Is it now clearer? 77.125.152.2 (talk) 11:10, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Still not really sure what could be "developing personal excellence", but let's try French:

Bonjour à tous, bienvenus dans notre cours de cinq jours, faisant partie de notre projet Sapehl, destiné à developper vos compétences personelles and atteindre l'excellence, version deux mille quinze.

--Lgriot (talk) 21:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I see the problem you pointed at, so I've changed the sentence again, and I hope now it's more comprehensible. Could you please change also your translation according to the current version? 05:49, 20 November 2015 (UTC) 77.125.152.2 (talk)

I'm not the original translator, but here goes: Bonjour à tous, bienvenue dans notre cours de cinq jours, faisant partie de notre projet Sapehl, version deux mille quinze, visant à developper vos compétences personelles et atteindre l'excellence. (I'm guessing that 2015 applies to the course, not to excellence, so I've moved it up in the sentence to make it clearer). --Xuxl (talk) 09:54, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Typos: développer [acute accent on the first "e"] — personnelles [with two "n"] — AldoSyrt (talk) 08:32, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Apostrophes in headlines, and quotes.

Hi. Whenever I go on the BBC News website, I see headlines such as Paris attacks: 'I will not give you the gift of hating you'. Why does the site use an 'apostrophe' instead of a "quote", when it is quite clearly a quote? --Yonglingtonshire (talk) 11:31, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

See Quotation_mark#Quotation_marks_in_English. 78.98.70.30 (talk) 11:41, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Like the user above has mentioned, these are not apostrophes but are single quotes. Since single quotation marks are used when nested inside of a set of double quotation marks, my guess is that this is used to make it easy to copy-and-paste an article title and then cite it. (Note that, when citing a news article—for example, using a news article as a reference in a Wikipedia article or something like that—many citation styles dictate that you put the article title in double quotes, and thus a quotation within the article title would then go in single quotes.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:14, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Let me just briefly note what is in the article that 78' linked just above:

• In ordinary American usage, double quotation marks are first-level (outside), and single quotation marks are second-level (inside).
• In ordinary British usage, that is reversed: single quotation marks are first-level, and double are second-level.

That's all you're seeing; nothing fancy about it. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:36, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

• What, people exist who still alternate nested quotation marks?! —Tamfang (talk) 06:05, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

The BBC, like many publishers, has its own style guide which, in this case, states that the organisation prefers single quotation marks over double ones: [1], about 2/3 through the page. Bazza (talk) 21:44, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Two points:

• Even in Britain, some publishers prefer to use double quotes as the first level.
• Even in newspapers that use double quotes as the first level, you will often see single quotes used in headlines. Presumably the designers feel that reducing the amount of space taken up by punctuation is more important than consistency with their normal style. (Similarly, in headlines it is common to see the word "and" replaced with a comma, and commas omitted when they are at the end of a line.) Here are three examples in front pages hosted on the Newseum web site. (I believe these URLs will be good for a couple of days and then expire.)

• From the Seattle Times
• From the Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ)
• From the National Post (Toronto)

In each case one of the main headlines on the front page uses single quotes, even though the body of the same story uses double quotes.

--70.49.170.168 (talk) 05:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

How many books in high-school?

How do we decide how many books high-schoolers have to read?

Is there any empirical evidence that we have to read at least x (be it 20, 30, or 40) books to write properly?

--Scicurious (talk) 14:14, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

As for how people decide, that varies from place to place; depending on where you are you could probably read up on how the curriculum for that school or state was determined. It's not really about number of books so much as content (i.e., a certain selection of books that people agree are culturally or intellectually important and that students should be familiar with).

As for your second question, no, there is no exact number of books someone needs to read to learn how to write; books vary in their length and complexity, schools vary in how effectively they teach writing, and people vary in their learning ability and style. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is that some required reading is a good lesson in how not to write - literary junk such as Silas Marner or Moby-Dick. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:34, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose if people in Utah don't read Catch 22, that has a political explanation, not an educational one.

Regarding the 2nd part: maybe finding the number of books that descent writers have read is kind of tricky. However, still regarding the empirical evidence, is there any research about reading habits of good writers?--Scicurious (talk) 14:37, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

• "Descent writer" is that decadent writer? --Denidi (talk) 17:46, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

• Presumably "decent" writer was meant. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 05:02, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

If you want to find more information on this topic, you can type "X grade reading list" into Google, and see what recommended reading lists exist for students in each grade. Here is a sample of books for the 9th grade, for example. --Jayron32 14:48, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

It's not about the lists as such, but about the reasoning behind the list, how they got into existence. --Scicurious (talk) 15:01, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Here is an early reading list from 1934. This is an outgrowth of a concept known as a canon, specifically the Western canon. Individual books are chosen by individual school districts, but generally try to represent their version of the western canon: the notion being that there should be a set of works which are shared among an entire culture, to provide a unified experience within the culture. That's what canon is all about. --Jayron32 15:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Appropriateness of required readings

Also of interest: List of most commonly challenged books in the United States for good books that belong banned across schools, according to certain groups. Denidi (talk) 17:46, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Some of those are definitely not appropriate for high school classes. I recall we had to read Lord of the Flies, and my thought was, "Why are we reading this garbage?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Silas Marner and Moby-Dick above, and now, Lord of the Flies: did you come to this thread just to tell us what books you hated at school? And I don't believe anyone wanted to ban the books I linked above based on their supposedly poor literary qualities. The reason is probably profanity, depicting homosexuals as normal people, sexual content, and promoting socialist ideas. Denidi (talk) 18:39, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Don't worry, Denidi. We all go through stages, and many of the opinions and attitudes we held as callow 16-year olds turn out to be embarrassing in retrospect as we mature and bring our wider world experience into the equation. But there's an exception to every rule, and Bugs seems to be stuck at 16. It happens. On the one hand, there are the billions of words that have been written about Moby-Dick and LOTF (Golding was even awarded a Nobel Prize). OTOH, we have the very succinct critique "They're garbage" from Baseball Bugs. All I can say is, thank God he's not a paid literary critic, 'cos I'd feel very short-changed indeed. Imagine if a child went up to a librarian seeking assistance in finding Moby-Dick on the shelves, and was told not to even bother because "It's garbage". That would be the librarian from Hell.

However, even wacky viewpoints have their adult adherents, so what I'd rather see from Bugs is a citation from a reliable source saying "They're garbage" or words to that effect, and not just his own personal opinion, because, Heaven knows and he does too, that this page is not for the expression of personal opinions. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:18, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Reading the cliffnotes version of Silas Marner, it sounds a lot more interesting than what we were compelled to read in high school. The overall point being that a significant amount of high school required reading was over some of our heads. It had the effect of totally turning me off to literature. On the "trying-to-ban" list, I was surprised to see Tom Sawyer but not Huckleberry Finn, as the latter was the controversial one in my day. And a much more interesting read, FYI. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:42, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

So, you were "totally turned off literature". That's not unknown. How does that admitted complete lack of exposure to these works qualify you to have any opinion at all on them, whether negative, positive or something else? If "they're garbage" is code for "I couldn't get into them, and never read enough to form a proper opinion", why not say that? If your experience were relevant to this thread, that is. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:48, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

No, no, no. We were forced to read Silas Marner, and it was wretched. Yet I've always been told that I write well. So I'm questioning the premise behind the OP's question: How does reading the works of dead authors help anyone write better? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:54, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you're on about now. You're taking three books that didn't happen to appeal to you when you were 16, and on that basis questioning the whole concept of reading classic books as an educative experience? Maybe you learned to write well despite them? Maybe you learned more than you know or care to admit?

Do you think it would be an easy task to set a syllabus of books that were guaranteed to be enjoyed by every single student? Would that even be a wise goal? Setting only readily accessible material for students is surely no way to foster perseverance and a sense that some things require effort and application before they reveal their jewels, and are worth that effort. Exposure has its merits. Otherwise, adults would still be watching only cartoons and reading only comic books. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:13, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

There's a lot more we were forced to read, and I would have to wrack my brain to come up with something I liked. Although maybe it was less about the book than about the way it was taught. I was more interested in factual stuff. When others were reading Catcher in the Rye (which I got through maybe a page or two before giving it back to the library or whatever), I was reading the encyclopedia and the dictionary. In any case, I would still like to know how reading fiction from past centuries improves one's writing style. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Damnit, are you people even trying: [2] --Jayron32 21:12, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I find Baseball Bugs to be very trying Akld guy (talk) 05:36, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

"Try" reading Moby-Dick and you'll find out all about "trying". Based on Jayron's links, if I do write well it's because I read encylopedias and dictionaries when I was in school. And I still do. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:12, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Bugs, you have some sympathy from me, since I hated reading Catcher, In Cold Blood, Gullivers Travels, To Build a Fire, Red Badge of Courage, A Separate Peace, Waiting for Godot, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Grapes of Wrath, David Copperfield, Tess of the D'Urnervilles, and just about anything else I was assigned in school. In fact, the only book I had to read that I enjoyed reading was To Kill a Mockingbird. I did, however, choose to read Moby Dick at age 19, and enjoyed it, after being assigned and liking Benito Cerino in college.

I was told towards the end of my public schooling when I asked why we didn't read anything actually entertaining that the books we were assigned were based on a list of classics (Dickens, Shakespeare) to which titles like Catcher, Red Badge, Separate Peace, and Portrait of the Artist had been added in the 70's to make reading more relevant to "youth". My experience was that what I read by word of mouth from teachers, such as Lord of the Rings, Watership Down, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Fountainhead was much more rewarding. I know that many of those books were actually taught in other high schools, as all those titles I just mentioned were on sale in Barnes and Nobles as "summer reading" assigned by various school districts I did not attend. μηδείς (talk) 18:29, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." --Jayron32 20:07, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Haha! But I read LotR at 11, and AS long after I lost my virginity... BTW, if you find it, please let me know.... μηδείς (talk) 22:31, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I do recall being forced to read Red Badge of Courage. Several of the others are English works, and since English lit was an option for seniors, I skipped it. What you're saying in general confirms my suspicions that the problem was not so much the books, but the way they were taught. Oddly enough, I liked better the Spanish-language works we read in Spanish classes. Maybe because they were being taught correctly. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:36, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Pour vous, rien.

Is "Bien sûr! Pour vous, rien." proper French?

Does "Pour vous, rien", mean "For you, anything" or "For you, nothing"? Or could it mean either of those depending on the context?

Thank you. CBHA (talk) 22:02, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

It means "For you, anything". While "rien" could mean "nothing" or "anything" depending on the context, in THAT context, it means "anything". --Jayron32 01:16, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Merci beaucoup! CBHA (talk) 04:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

De rien! --Jayron32 04:06, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Well there is no context in that sentence, so, as a native French speaker, I read it as: "For you, nothing". (For example, everyone gets paid, but you get nothing since you didn't work a lick). It could mean: "for you, there is nothing I wouldn't do" (i.e., I'd do anything), but that interpretation would require more context. --Xuxl (talk) 10:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, the "Bien sûr..." ("Of course!") bit implies the speaker is in agreement with their interlocutor. The sense of the entire sentence is "Of course! For you [I'd do] anything". Regarding the difference between "For you, There is nothing I wouldn't do" and "I'd do anything", that's part of the problem with word-for-word rather than sense-for-sense translating. The idiom here is clearly that the speaker is meaning to say what in English would be "Of course, for you, anything..." "Rien" doesn't have a direct one-to-one correspondence to a single English word... --Jayron32 10:53, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

"Bien sûr" means "of course" and does not necessarily imply agreement. "Pour vous, rien" means "for you, nothing" and cannot mean "for you, anything", and it doesn't depend on the context. The context could be "many problems for the others, but for you, no problem", but the context doesn't affect the meaning of this "rien" which here means "nothing". French native speaker here too. Akseli9 (talk) 12:32, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Jayron32, if the speaker here is meaning to say what in English would be "Of course, for you, anything", then "Bien sûr! Pour vous, rien" is not proper French and he should have said something like "Bien sûr! Pour vous, tout ce que vous voulez" or "Bien sûr! Pour vous, c'est quand vous voulez". Akseli9 (talk) 12:51, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

My french is a bit rusty, so I defer to the native speakers. Je suis désolé. --Jayron32 13:36, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

You were correct though in pointing that "rien" sometimes means "quelque-chose" and can sometimes have a weird handling. Akseli9 (talk) 13:44, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

This is because "rien" comes from Latin "res" (well, actually the accusative "rem"), which does mean "thing". Historically, in Old French "rien" was simply the positive word "something". Similarly, "aucun" simply meant "any"/"anyone", but today neither of those words can be separated from the negative construction. But sometimes the second component of a French negative can be used in a positive sense, e.g. "plus" by itself can mean "more" or "no more", and "personne" by itself can mean "a person" or "no one". Adam Bishop (talk) 15:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that's why idiomatic translations come across better than trying to find the "one word". The "ne....XXXX" (ne...plus, ne...rien, ne...jamais, etc.) construction in French has no English equivalent, and is the source of some of these imperfect translations... --Jayron32 16:12, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

An example with "rien" meaning "quelque chose": "Y a-t-il rien d'autre ?; "Is there anything else?" — AldoSyrt (talk) 16:22, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

• Why not, "Pour vous, le monde"? μηδείς (talk) 18:14, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh yeah I forgot "jamais", which can mean either "never", or (in a positive sense) "ever". Adam Bishop (talk) 15:58, 21 November 2015 (UTC)