Language desk
< February 26	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 28 >

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.

February 27

fried hardware

what is a better (more formal or correct) term for "fried" as in hardware that overheat and not working even after cool down? online thesaurus no help, google only shows jokes about delicious fried hardware. -- 42.61.51.210 (talk · contribs)

Failure of electronic components. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:16, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Burnt, nonfunctional components" ? StuRat (talk) 04:27, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

[irreparably] heat-damaged components/hardware, depending on how formal you want to be. --Orange Mike | Talk 04:40, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"You let out the magic blue smoke." --Trovatore (talk) 06:56, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What's the context? What sentence are you using it in? - X201 (talk) 12:59, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think "Failed" is probably the best simple synonym. Components that are "fried" are not necessarily overheated. You can "fry" a component (e.g., by reversing V_cc and V_dd) without any obvious overheating. -Arch dude (talk) 04:12, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"burned out" seems to be a fairly common term. Iapetus (talk) 13:08, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Evgeny or Yevgeny?

I have suggested a merge of the pages Yevgeny Ivanushkin and Evgeny Ivanushkin, because they are about the same Russian person, but I don't know which version of his first name is preferable in English. Could anyone give some input? Lilac pig (talk) 12:16, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yevgeny Plushenko redirects to Evgeni Plushenko, for what it's worth. In a similar vein, I used to see Ekaterina Gordeeva referred to as Yekaterina Gordeyeva sometimes. There must be something about the exact way a Russian says those names that result in those "Y-something" transliterations. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:24, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Baseball Bugs: The letter is always pronounced with IPA /j/ at the beginning of words, after vowels and the soft and hard signs, maybe sometimes murmured in a rapid speech but still. The question is rather whether romanization should conform with the pronunciation or with the graphical appearance of the letter.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:02, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's less about what's preferable, more about what meets WP:COMMONNAME, probably worth rooting around Google for English variants to see if one version is more prominent than the others. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:27, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Both seem to be used equally [in]frequently in English-language sources; e.g. Evgeny Yevgeny. However, WP:RUS explicitly advises for Ye- in beginnings of words, as in the article titles for e.g. Yeltsin and his home city Yekaterinburg, whither Eltsin and Ekaterinburg redirect to. --217.140.96.140 (talk) 13:44, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Another source: the main author entry in the US Library of Congress uses Y for the first and last letters of the given name Yevgeny (e.g. Yevtushenko). So not only a merge of the WP pages, but also their items in Wikidata is called for. Note there, that other Latin-alphabet languages begin that name with such letters as I and J, besides the unadorned E. -- Deborahjay (talk) 18:29, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

ETA: I performed the Wikidata merge. -- Deborahjay (talk) 18:48, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Deborahjay: It is curious that the LC do not respect their own standard. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:53, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Любослов Езыкин: (Lüboslóv Yęzýkin), I regret having offered only this one example from the Library of Congress rather than its actual romanization guidelines from Cyrillic. Even so, it wouldn't necessarily have been definitive for the purpose here. I basically offered one authoritative cataloging source~~, as I oppose the g-hits method suggested above~~. --Deborahjay (talk) 20:00, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, I hope it won't offend you, I do not clearly understand you. I just made a small nonpersonal quasi-humorous remark about the LC failing at their own rulings. Probably, I shouldn't've done, but still I wonder why they did that. Anyway, as for Wikidata, do whatever you think appropriate.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 08:58, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Lilac pig: According to our article there are several possible variants:

ISO9/GOST: Evgenij

ALA-LC: Evgeniĭ

BGN/PCGN: Yevgeniy

Passport (1997-2010): Evgeny

Passport (since 2010): Evgenii

As it was stated above, English Wikipedia uses its own romanization scheme, based on BGN/PCGN, but which simplifies -iy to -y. Though these rules do not always work, often public persons choose some idiosyncratic romanizations which do not correspond to any standards, in such case we must respect their choice and not change the established variant.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:50, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]