Language desk
< November 5	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	November 7 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 6

"Davka" in Hebrew

How would the word "davka" be used in Hebrew? Examples would be particularly useful. Mo-Al 05:17, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't speak Hebrew, but a friend of mine uses it as a kind of expletive both in English and (of all languages) in Swiss German. He says it means something like in spite of and contrary to what you expected, with that certain touch of Jewish paradoxical humor. I can't give you any examples in Hebrew, I'm afraid, but Linda Grant exemplifies it with: I went to the wedding, davka the bride looked nice. On the same site she offers some more thoughts on the word. It seems to be commonly used in Yiddish as well. Hope this helped a bit. ---Sluzzelin 08:00, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mock English?

In English, there are things such as mock German, where English speakers make fun of what they perceive to be the nuances of other languages. Does this phenomenon exist in relation to other languages, though? Is there mock English in German? In French? In Japanese? —DO'Neil 06:46, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good question. I once saw a Venezuelan soap opera with a character who was supposed to be a stereotypical non-Spanish-speaking American. I remember him saying "I...necesito..." ("I...need..." something or other) and I found this amusing because an English speaker would probably learn the word for "I" ("yo") quite early, and if he hadn't gotten that far, he certainly wouldn't be able to conjugate "necesitar" ("to need"). But I suppose to a Spanish speaker, "I" is one of the most recognizable English words, whereas "need" isn't.

One more anecdote - I once overheard some Asian exchange students talking and laughing on the bus. They were obviously sharing a joke at the expense of an English speaker, because the only phrase in English was "Credit card for coffee!" which they repeated over and over.

Sorry this wasn't quite on topic, I look forward to seeing any other answers to this question. --Grace 10:07, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deja vu! See pseudo-English. Also Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Language/July 2006#pseudo-English?. --Shantavira 11:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And see Wikipedia:Reference_desk_archive/Language/March_2006#Imitation_of_English, where people were reminded of the English airmen in 'Allo 'allo. Skittle 01:02, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it exists, probably in every language, and probably has existed as long as there's been different languages. The oldest example I know is the origin of barbarian, the proto-Indo-European "*barbar-" which is most likely an onomatopoeic for some foreign and/or unintelligble speech. --BluePlatypus 11:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly, there are several indigenous languages of Mexico named Popoloca, which is the Aztec word for "gibberish".

I think both barbar- and popol- are based on children's babbling (there's another very similar onomatopoeic word, babble), rather than any particular kind of foreign speech. --Ptcamn 12:33, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I thought "babble" was named after the biblical Tower of Babel, where God was supposedly so angered that He caused everyone to speak different languages, and hence sound like babbling to each other. StuRat 17:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The original French version of Asterix in Britain has some fun examples of this sort of thing: one that comes to mind is a character saying "Il est, n'est-il pas?" (It is, isn't it?) which is incorrect French and obtained by simply translating word-for-word. All before Altavista had ever been thought of! ;) Loganberry (Talk) 15:11, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Many years ago, a Hispanic actor in the U.S. (perhaps Ricardo Montalban) said that as a youth, he would see U.S. tourists walking around in his native Mexico. They were pale skinned, and wore shorts, and said things that had "midwestern "R" sounds" which to him (speaking no English) sounded like "Horse dorf garb farg." I see car names created by Asian companies for sale in the U.S and they seem like the same thing, as if non-English speakers were sitting around making up English-sounding names.Edison 16:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's mock English in English, it consist of speaking very loudly and over-stressing syllables. RJFJR 16:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I heard once that Japanese comedians imitate Anglos by strongly stressing the penultimate syllable of every word. —Tamfang 07:18, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

'Named for' vs. 'named after'

I've noticed an increasing use of 'named for' in sentences such as "X [building] is named for Y [person]". Is this an Americanism? As a Brit, I would always use 'named after'. --Richardrj ^talk ^email 09:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Named for" is fairly common in North American English, and in the US possibly more common than "named after". --Lambiam ^Talk 10:34, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as an English person I would only ever use named after. Which ever way I look at it named for just feels wrong. Englishnerd 18:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh that's just all wrong. It should be "after whom it is named". ;) But yes, after doing some amateurish searches online, it seems that it is indeed a recent thing, and probably a USism. You can find some 17th century texts using "named for", but then only in the sense of "named for a position". What seems kind of funny is that while "named after" is more common, "for whom.." gives more google hits than "after whom..". But "after whom" seems much older, and more common in older texts - seems like it might be a hypercorrection, or given that whom is obsolete, a hyperarchaism. (a phenomenon which does seem more common in US english) --BluePlatypus 00:43, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Blue Platypus, maybe your humour was too elevated for my humble brain, but could you indulge me with an explanation. "This building is after whom it is named X" sounds rather absurd to me. You seem to be thinking of a construction such as "He is the person after whom the building was named". But that's talking about the person, not the building. 01:19, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's "who the building was named after" versus "after whom the building was named". --BluePlatypus 19:11, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That passive construction was never part of the question, or of the discussion. We were talking about the active sentence "X [building] is named for Y [person]". JackofOz 02:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Which is a passive construction. You mean we weren't talking about relative clauses. —Tamfang 05:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW: As a Canadian (Toronto/Ottawa) I'm accustomed to "named after," and "named for" sounds odd to me, though I've run into it a number of times. So perhaps it's a USism rather than a North Americanism, if my one datum sheds much light. I can't speak for all Canadians. --Coppertwig 14:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in Calgary. Sometimes we'll say that a person is "named for" another person. Not inanimate objects though; they're always "named after" someone. --Charlene 15:22, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure its much of an Americanism. I'm American and I always say "named after."

William Wordworth Daffodills.

Was william wordsword's daffodils a imaginative piece or did he really experience it?

Apparently, this is based on an actual experience, recorded in a journal entry by Dorothy, William Wordsworth's sister, describing the occasion. See for example this page. --Lambiam ^Talk 18:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Btw, his name was neither Wordworth nor Wordsword, but Wordsworth. :) JackofOz 01:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

serbian..cyrillic alphabet help.. please, i'm confused enough as it is...

I have tried to find a way but I am confused. The english words are roughly " my sweet little male cat" which I belive in serbian translates to "moje malo mačak" I know the mačak is correct because it is my cat's name. I am having trouble reading handwritten cyrillic.... and matching up some of the letters. So if anyone could be of help, great.

I think Моје мало Мацαк  is correct I know it doesn't mention sweet... but any help??

17:52, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I would think it should be "moje dragi mali mačak", but the word "little" in English in a phrase like this is often better translated with a diminutive ending, which would be "moje dragi mačakić". Marco polo 18:31, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is the most literal translation:

my sweet little male cat -> moj slatki mali mačor -> мој слатки мали мачор

"male cat" when translated is "mačor", but "mačak" (мачак) can also be used. "Mačor" sounds more masculine btw. "dragi"(драги) in english is "dear". "sweet" is "slatki"(слатки). If you want to use a diminutive version, use this: "мој слатки мали мачорчић". Just for the exercise, here is a version if it was a female cat: "моја слатка мала мачкица". When talking about female cat diminutive version sounds more natural (female, non-diminutive version is "mačka"). Shinhan 13:08, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say that "mačak" (мачак) is slightly more common than "mačor" (мачор). And it has diminutive connotations, as well, so it would be preferred in this kind of sentence ("mačor" would be used to stress the masculinity). There's also the third, even more informal/hypocoristic form, "macan" (мацан), which may be used in the given context as well. "Mačorčić" (мачорчић) is possible but sounds stretched, and "mačkić" is definitely wrong. Duja^► 08:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. ...and, quoted "моје мало" is neuter grammatical gender, as opposed to requested masculine, so the third word could easily be "mače" (маче) which translates as "kitten". Duja^► 08:49, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why were glyphs rotated?

I'm curious as to why glyphs rotated 45 degrees (or how). For example, the latin 1 used to be horizontal, and the latin A used to be on its side. A lot of the other glyph transformations seem like logical steps, but this one doesn't.

Much help appreciated! Xhin 20:35, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure there was any general "glyph rotation". The early 1st millennium BC Phoenician letter Alep looks like a rotated capital "A" (rotated a little more than 90 degrees, rather than 45 degrees), but the actual shape history of its later evolution through Greek into Latin is in fact somewhat more complicated. Indo-Arabic numerals have a completely different history than Latin letters (and the two have been used together for less than a thousand years, I think). AnonMoos 21:00, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Early alphabetic writing wasn't necessarily unidirectional. See Boustrophedon, for example. Also, letters tend to be modified over the years by scribes to make them easier to write, so when adopting the right-to-left alphabet of Phoenician to the left-to-right of Greek, some reversals make sense. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 21:07, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, see History of the alphabet, and in particular the nice little comparison graph. You'll see that the Latin alphabet hasn't really been rotated compared to Phoenician one - I can only identify A and S as rotated. But B,C,D,E,P and R could be considered to be mirrored. Flipping letters is very common among dyslexics, children and people learning an alphabet. So it's probably not strange that some letters would get flipped when a culture decided to imitate the others' alphabet. Now, the numbers have nothing to do with the alphabet; The Roman numeral "1" had always been vertical. Whereas the Greek and Latin (and most European) alphabets had more or less taken their final form before the Indo-Arabic numerals were introduced into Europe, with Fibonacci's Liber Abacci. (Which I tried to find a facsimile of just recently. Unfortunately there's no copy online, nor any decent English translation. (It's a bit hard since he wrote in 13th century Tuscan Latin) --BluePlatypus 00:01, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The way a person writes letters, including the angle, can change over a person's lifetime and especially during the first few years after the person was taught to write, as he/she establishes a handwriting style and figures out ways to write faster. So it's not surprising things would change over many generations. --Coppertwig 14:39, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Editing

Are the commas correct too?

Near its starting point is the small and little-known, Citadel Valley (the valley below David’s Tower), which joins the Hinnom Valley to its south.

Today, the route from the Jaffa Gate eastward to the Western Wall and down David Street and the Street of the Chain, follows more or less the line of the Transverse Valley.

~~(0) There should be no hyphen here in "little known".~~ (1) Leave out the comma following "little-known" (preferred), or else perhaps put a comma after "small" (so that "and little-known" is offset between commas, like a parenthetical remark). (2) Does the route go to the Western Wall and then down David Street? Then I'd insert "then" for clarity: "... to the Western Wall and then down David Street". You could put a comma before the word "and" to indicate a slight but natural pause (preferred), or else omit the comma after "Chain". Together: "Near its starting point is the small and little-known Citadel Valley (the valley below David’s Tower), which joins the Hinnom Valley to its south. — Today, the route from the Jaffa Gate eastward to the Western Wall, and then down David Street and the Street of the Chain, follows more or less the line of the Transverse Valley." (3) If David Street and the Street of the Chain come before the Western Wall, just leave out the two words "and then". --Lambiam ^Talk 22:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lambiam, I'm curious about why you numbered your comments starting with zero. Was it because the first comment was not directly related to the question, or do you have your own personal method for such things? :)JackofOz 01:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The proximate reason is indeed that I inserted (the incorrect) remark (0) after I had already written (1) and (2), and felt the number appropriately suggested "before we start...". Having said that, in formal expositions I have been known to succumb to the temptation of the Dijkstra style of numbering, shown here. --Lambiam ^Talk 08:08, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My little-used degree in mathematics failed me, I'm afraid. Thanks anyway. JackofOz 08:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here is how I would edit your passage:

"Near its starting point is the small and little-known Citadel Valley (the valley below David’s Tower), which joins the Hinnom Valley to its south.

"Today, the route from the Jaffa Gate eastward to the Western Wall—down David Street and the Street of the Chain— more or less follows the line of the Transverse Valley."

The route from Jaffa Gate to the Western Wall runs down David Street and Street of the Chain. That is, the route is 1. Jaffa Gate, 2. David Street, 3. Street of the Chain, and 4. Western Wall. Sometimes it is best to set off elements that break up the sentence structure with em-dashes, as I have done. "Little-known" should be hyphenated—as should all adjectival compounds beginning with "little", unless they follow a copula—per the Chicago Manual of Style.

Marco polo 22:56, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]