Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 August 20

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August 20

Do these fish die often?

There is a popular joke that goes something like this:

• Do these fish die often?
• The usually die only once.

As everyone knows, the idea of the joke is confusion between $\exists fish:\forall time:dies(fish,time)$ and $\exists time:\forall fish:dies(fish,time)$.

Is there a more natural way to put this into words than "there is a fish which dies all the time" and "there is a time when all fish die"? JIP | Talk 02:40, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Presumably your second sentence should start with "They". In any case, no matter the verbal twist, I don't get the question do they "die often". Does that mean they have short lifespans, or what? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:19, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

The version I know is the airline passenger asking the flight attendant, "do these planes crash often?" Response, "no, only once". I think that makes a little more sense than the "fish" version. --Trovatore (talk) 06:24, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

(ec) Apart from the not quite natural formulation of the original ambiguous question, I feel that neither the formal logic expressions, not their renderings in natural language, mean the same as a possible interpretation of the question. "Often" is about a large number of occurrences, while "all" is about universality, and "exists" does not figure in the question. The original question can perhaps be made more natural by adding a perilous condition: "Do these fish often die when the water gets cold?". The intention of the person asking the question is, presumably, "Is this a kind of fish of which a large number die when the water gets cold?", and not, "Is this a kind of fish that dies a large number of times when the water gets cold?".  --Lambiam 06:45, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

"Are these fish prone to dying?" Clarityfiend (talk) 06:53, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

"Yes. In fact, every living soul will taste death." (Qur'an 3:185)  --Lambiam 07:00, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• A significant proportion of humor is based on linguistic ambiguity. This is a joke of the form shown in the classic couplet "Time flies like an arrow/Fruit flies like a banana". In the case of the OP's joke, the ambiguity comes from the different way that "these fish" are treated by the two interlocutors. When the question asker says "do these fish die often" they are asking about the fish considers as a group. When the question answerer says "no, they die only once" he's considering each fish as an individual. --Jayron32 13:00, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, though for the sake of the joke, the first part of the couplet is phrased in a way I think few native speakers would choose to. A more idiomatic expression would be to ask if they die "easily". That prevents the ambiguity (and therefore the joke), but jokes really only land properly if the setup isn't a contorted phrase we immediately see as weird. The airplane versions works, which is why the joke lands (see what I did there?). Matt Deres (talk) 15:46, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• On the contrary, the arrow of time is an idiom that many native speakers would recognize, even moreso the phrase "Time flies", which is so old, it has a latin version, tempus fugit. --Jayron32 15:48, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• Furthermore, the joke is important enough to merit a Wikipedia article about it. --Jayron32 15:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• (E/C). Agreed on all that; I was referring to the OP's joke. Though I do suppose both fruit flies and bananas die easily. And often. Matt Deres (talk) 15:53, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• Time, however, never dies. It was born however... --Jayron32 15:56, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

That's only inside the universe, though. What about outside? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:02, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I think the first formal expression would be slightly better (though not necessarily good) like this: $\forall time:\exists fish:dies(fish,time)$. "For all time" would have to be interpreted as "every day" or "every week" or whatever is meant by "often". I imagine the people standing in front of an aquarium and the intention of the question being "do you have to pull a dead one out ever so often?". --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:01, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

A joke is like a frog. You might understand it better if you dissect it, but it still dies. --Jayron32 16:07, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I do understand the joke, don't worry. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:10, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but we also had to kill it... --Jayron32 16:12, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Did it die often? Alansplodge (talk) 18:17, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

More than it should have. --Jayron32 16:01, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Dialog doubt from The International (2009 film)

Detective speaks about shooter, who is using alias name:

• Detective: The Sherwood ID he used? It's clean. All of it attached to a dead address.

What does "dead address" mean? Rizosome (talk) 07:50, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Presumably a nonexistent address. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:10, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Likely an address that used to exist, but now doesn't (due to urban redevelopment, say) so can't provide any leads (clues): the fact that the Sherwood ID is "clean" suggests that the shooter might be using the ID of a real person called Sherwood who was associated with that address.

If the address had been completely fictional, the Detective would likely have said "fake" address." If it had been a real address unconnected to the Sherwood ID, he might have said "false address" (at least in my BrE idiolect). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.63.186 (talk) 12:39, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Here at Wikipedia, we have the concept of a "dead link". I wonder if "dead address" would have been understood before the advent of the internet? Alansplodge (talk) 13:01, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I think so! We used to have dead letters...70.67.193.176 (talk) 14:35, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure we still do. Letters are not completely extinct yet, thank god. As long as humans are involved in addressing letters, there'll be undecipherable, missing, or inaccurate addresses, or otherwise undeliverable letters. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:01, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

76 meter-long escalators

The article Koivusaari metro station says: The station has 76 meter-long escalators and funicular-style elevators. If English had the same grammar rules as Finnish, this would mean that the station has 76 escalators, each of which is one meter long. But what is the interpretation in English? According to English grammar rules, does this indeed mean that the station has escalators that are 76 meters long? JIP | Talk 18:54, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

There are no strict rules in English for the orthography of compound attributes. People understand that low fat milk^[1] is not fat milk that is low. A publisher's manual of style may have a rule, but that rule then does not extend beyond the reach of the publisher.  --Lambiam 21:33, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• Maybe not in your English, but in mine the original example must be "76-meter-long escalators" and Lambian's must be "low-fat milk" or "lowfat milk". The other variations are just wrong. "Escalators 76 meters long" (or "escalators 76 m long") would be fine, of course.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.144.99.72 (talk)

In English as in Finnish, "76 meter-long escalators" would tend to be read as referring to 76 escalators, each of which is one meter long. The normal usage when one is referring to (an unspecified number of) escalators, each of which is 76 meters long, is "76-meter-long escalators". (See the two images at the top of MOS:HYPHEN.) I've emended the article accordingly. Deor (talk) 21:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

In spoken English the speaker would have to make a special effort of pronunciation/timing, probably accompanied by gestures and/or facial expressions, to clearly indicate the meaning conveyed in writing by the hyphens: in casual speech they would probably not bother, as in the real world one would never encounter an absurdly large number of meter-long elevators, so the phrase would be correctly understood. The latter is also true of casual writing, but in an encyclopedia or other formal context strict precision is appropriate. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.121.162.207 (talk) 13:12, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure meter-long escalators are not a thing. Even in Brooklyn. But the larger variety will probably be handy for any visiting Welsh punks. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:19, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

I thought for a moment that I'd found one, but then I realized that they only give the height, not the length. Assuming the standard 30° inclination, the length would be twice the height. So Martin was right. --184.144.99.72 (talk) 04:06, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

"World's Smallest Escalator" certainly deserves a mention at Escalator. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:12, 22 August 2021 (UTC) I sometimes feel Wikipedia has sent me over the edge.

@Martinevans123: It is mentioned there already: Escalator#Shortest examples. --CiaPan (talk) 17:08, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you CiaPan. It's so small, I must have missed it. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:39, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

As always, Randall Munroe has something to say on the subject. [2] AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:55, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Linking MFL Page to English Translation of it

Hi! I'm translating my first article from French to English, and I'm wondering how to properly link the two pages together. Also, how do I properly cite for the page, and how do I create internal wikipedia links? I tried using the normal linking tool but it seemed to only work for links to articles in the English Wikipedia. Also, is there a better place to send my queries like these? many thanks for your help, --EcheveriaJ (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Once the article is in mainspace, you can click "Add links" below "Languages" in the side bar and add the French article. For linking inside an article to another-language Wikipedia, say the page Conservatoire de musique, danse et art dramatique en France on the French Wikipedia, you can use

{{ill|Conservatoire de musique, danse et art dramatique en France|fr}},

which displays as

Conservatoire de musique, danse et art dramatique en France.

This is mainly useful if an English-language article on the conservatoire is forthcoming. Alternatively, use

[[fr:Conservatoire de musique, danse et art dramatique en France|Conservatoire de musique, danse et art dramatique en France]],

which displays as

Conservatoire de musique, danse et art dramatique en France.

 --Lambiam 21:24, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

That is [[:fr:Conservatoire de musique, danse et art dramatique en France|Conservatoire de musique, danse et art dramatique en France]] with a colon before fr:. Otherwise it would link the entire page to the French article. JIP | Talk 13:05, 22 August 2021 (UTC)