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I was sent here from the Humanities desk:
From the answers there, it means something like "a theatre or act where different kinds of shows are performed". Can you confirm? -- Error ( talk) 00:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
The article Brazilian Portuguese says that "Roughly speaking, the differences between European Portuguese and standard Brazilian Portuguese can be defined as comparable to the ones found between British and American English." It links to a supposed source for this claim, but I don't actually see where the supposed source says this, or anything like it. I've read elsewhere that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are greater than those between BrE and AmE. Does anyone here have any knowledge of this? 86.160.218.94 ( talk) 04:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
I am hoping to find an electronic copy of this book AN Exultation OF Larks by James Lipton availal on the internet for payment or not. It is about collective nouns. Does anyone know? 117.241.120.50 ( talk) 06:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
The bottom line is that the only legal electronic copies you're likely to find would have to originate from the publisher. If someone else transcribed it, it is likely a copyright violation. The ref desk will not aid and abet copyright violations. ← Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm after some commentary so that I can better get my head around an issue. See this edit, where an editor has merged:
with
to produce:
Now, those 2 facts seem as unrelated as:
I certainly hope I never see a sentence like: An only child, he married his second wife in 1893. But many Wikipedia articles seem to suffer from this obsession some editors have to connect facts by use of the form: <clause phrase>, <main statement>, where the two parts often have only the most tenuous of connections, so one day I'm sure it will happen.
Does this construction have a name or is it better described than my feeble attempt? Why is it so favoured by many writers, even where the raw materials contraindicate its use? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Can any Japanese speakers dispense some linguistic wisdom regarding the emperor's speech to his country? As a non-speaker, I'm wondering first of all about his greeting, which sounded to me like "konnotamino", but if this is the true rōmaji I haven't been able to find the word through Google. It certainly wasn't " konnichiwa" anyway! News reporting I've seen in the Anglophone media has mentioned that his style was, although formal, perhaps surprisingly direct. In any case, the difficult courtly register of his father's 1945 broadcast seems to be a thing of the past. Or is it, behind the scenes, or in the emperor's new year addresses, for example? Next, I noticed throughout that he often ended sentences with a word that sounded like [mas] (nine or so times by my count), with most of them ending in what sounded like [te.i.mas]. What does this mean? Finally, has anyone got a link to either a video with a dubbed English translation of the full speech, or a transcript of it in English. BBC and others have been broadcasting excerpts totalling about 30 seconds, but it would be good to read the full thing. Actually, one more thing! I noticed that he bowed at the start and end, something which as it happens I asked about yesterday at Talk:Etiquette in Japan. Any input welcome. Thanks! 82.32.186.24 ( talk) 15:36, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict:merge with previous question) I've read that when Emperor Hirohito addressed the Japanese people to tell them WW2 was lost, few could understand anything he said, because he spoke some sort of "court Japanese" or formal archaic Samurai Japanese rather than the language of the people. Was the difference one of vocabulary and grammar, or just of pronunciation, so that when written out everyone would read and understand it? Did Hirohito give public speeches in the postwar years, and did he switch to common Japanese? In English, what would be an analog to Hirohito's non-understood 1945 radio speech? Would it be as if Queen Elizabeth delivered in address in Shakespearean English? Now Emperor Akihito has addressed the Japanese people on TV. Did he speak ordinary Japanese, and did he also speak Hirohito's formal version? Edison ( talk) 16:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Dressed in a dark suit, and seated against a backdrop designed to evoke the appearance of a traditional paper screens, Emperor Akihito spoke in mannered but modern Japanese – not the formal courtly language which is incomprehensible to many of the country’s residents. [1]
I don't know Japanese that well, but do know Chinese, and the Chinese Wikipedia page gives a side-by-side translation of Hirohito's speech (as well as providing images of the original document) here [2]. The text is described as 日文文語體 (Classical Japanese, Bungo-文語), and as a comparison of the translation between the original text and the formal (i.e., non-colloquial) Chinese translation attests, is essentially lexically very similar to Classical Chinese (but syntactically very different due to the inversion of the word order). The pronoun the Emperor used to refer to himself (朕) was the form of address that Qin Shihuang used to refer to himself, and the text is terse and very literary in form. The important thing to keep in mind is that Hirohito's speech was a recitation of a written document that was composed in an archaic style utilized solely for written correspondence, it was (I'm 98% sure) not reflective of any spoken vernacular utilized at court. I found the Japanese text of Akihito's speech on the Imperial Household's Agency's website:
この度の東北地方太平洋沖地震は,マグニチュード9.0という例を見ない規模の巨大地震であり,被災地の悲惨な状況に深く心を痛めています。地震や津波による死者の数は日を追って増加し,犠牲者が何人になるのかも分かりません。一人でも多くの人の無事が確認されることを願っています。また,現在,原子力発電所の状況が予断を許さぬものであることを深く案じ,関係者の尽力により事態の更なる悪化が回避されることを切に願っています。
現在,国を挙げての救援活動が進められていますが,厳しい寒さの中で,多くの人々が,食糧,飲料水,燃料などの不足により,極めて苦しい避難生活を余儀なくされています。その速やかな救済のために全力を挙げることにより,被災者の状況が少しでも好転し,人々の復興への希望につながっていくことを心から願わずにはいられません。そして,何にも増して,この大災害を生き抜き,被災者としての自らを励ましつつ,これからの日々を生きようとしている人々の雄々しさに深く胸を打たれています。
自衛隊,警察,消防,海上保安庁を始めとする国や地方自治体の人々,諸外国から救援のために来日した人々,国内の様々な救援組織に属する人々が,余震の続く危険な状況の中で,日夜救援活動を進めている努力に感謝し,その労を深くねぎらいたく思います。
今回,世界各国の元首から相次いでお見舞いの電報が届き,その多くに各国国民の気持ちが被災者と共にあるとの言葉が添えられていました。これを被災地の人々にお伝えします。
海外においては,この深い悲しみの中で,日本人が,取り乱すことなく助け合い,秩序ある対応を示していることに触れた論調も多いと聞いています。これからも皆が相携え,いたわり合って,この不幸な時期を乗り越えることを衷心より願っています。
被災者のこれからの苦難の日々を,私たち皆が,様々な形で少しでも多く分かち合っていくことが大切であろうと思います。被災した人々が決して希望を捨てることなく,身体(からだ)を大切に明日からの日々を生き抜いてくれるよう,また,国民一人びとりが,被災した各地域の上にこれからも長く心を寄せ,被災者と共にそれぞれの地域の復興の道のりを見守り続けていくことを心より願っています。
Which is written in modern colloquial Japanese (including foreign loanwords like magnitude マグニチュード). As Oda Mari pointed out, his first words were この度の konotabino, which is not a greeting, it means "this time, this particular instance". Hope this helps. 71.167.144.217 ( talk) 05:46, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
An English translation of the speech is now available online: [2] 82.32.186.24 ( talk) 18:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Do other languages also have the ambiguity of the English 'free'? I know for sure that in German and Spanish there is no way of confusing both meanings...
Finnish most certainly has no such ambiguity. Finnish has two entirely different adjectives for "free": vapaa is free as in speech, i.e. not restricted, while ilmainen is free as in beer, i.e. not costing anything. JIP | Talk 20:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
There is no ambiguity in English when you understand that "free" beer or software is an abbreviated way of saying "free of charge". ← Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
In fact, "gratis" to mean "free of charge" is a relatively new concept. "Gratis" actually means "(for) thanks", as noted in EO: [3] ← Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
In Polish, the word wolny is ambiguous, but in a different way: it means both "free" (as in "free speech") and "slow". Interestingly, powolny means both "slow" and "obedient", so it's at once a synonym and an antonym of wolny. "Free" as in "free beer" is darmowy, completely unrelated to wolny. — Kpalion (talk) 21:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Hi. I've noticed some languages, such as Arabic and Italian, have (in their IPA phonetic transcriptions) doubled consonants. FOr example, the word prosciutto is pronounced /prɔsˈʧuttɔ/ (scroll to the bottom, sorry it's French Wiktionary but the French just seem better at building a dictionary; the enwikt has no Italian IPA for this entry). How is the /tt/ pronounced? The only way I can think of not to run the /t/ together is to add a glottal stop in between but this would sound ridiculous even to me who does not speak Italian. 72.128.95.0 ( talk) 21:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
You can hear Prosciutto here: http://it.forvo.com/word/prosciutto/#it For PALA/PALLA see here: http://it.forvo.com/search/pala/ http://it.forvo.com/search/palla/ -- 151.51.60.184 ( talk) 02:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a mistake in the French Wiktionary: it should be [proʃˈʃutto] (by my dictionary), not * [prɔsˈʧuttɔ]. At any rate, there is no ʧ sound. Lfh ( talk) 10:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Are there any Italian words with the sound sequence [sʧ]? -- 84.61.170.180 ( talk) 10:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Language desk | ||
---|---|---|
< March 15 | << Feb | March | Apr >> | March 17 > |
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. |
I was sent here from the Humanities desk:
From the answers there, it means something like "a theatre or act where different kinds of shows are performed". Can you confirm? -- Error ( talk) 00:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
The article Brazilian Portuguese says that "Roughly speaking, the differences between European Portuguese and standard Brazilian Portuguese can be defined as comparable to the ones found between British and American English." It links to a supposed source for this claim, but I don't actually see where the supposed source says this, or anything like it. I've read elsewhere that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are greater than those between BrE and AmE. Does anyone here have any knowledge of this? 86.160.218.94 ( talk) 04:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
I am hoping to find an electronic copy of this book AN Exultation OF Larks by James Lipton availal on the internet for payment or not. It is about collective nouns. Does anyone know? 117.241.120.50 ( talk) 06:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
The bottom line is that the only legal electronic copies you're likely to find would have to originate from the publisher. If someone else transcribed it, it is likely a copyright violation. The ref desk will not aid and abet copyright violations. ← Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm after some commentary so that I can better get my head around an issue. See this edit, where an editor has merged:
with
to produce:
Now, those 2 facts seem as unrelated as:
I certainly hope I never see a sentence like: An only child, he married his second wife in 1893. But many Wikipedia articles seem to suffer from this obsession some editors have to connect facts by use of the form: <clause phrase>, <main statement>, where the two parts often have only the most tenuous of connections, so one day I'm sure it will happen.
Does this construction have a name or is it better described than my feeble attempt? Why is it so favoured by many writers, even where the raw materials contraindicate its use? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 10:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Can any Japanese speakers dispense some linguistic wisdom regarding the emperor's speech to his country? As a non-speaker, I'm wondering first of all about his greeting, which sounded to me like "konnotamino", but if this is the true rōmaji I haven't been able to find the word through Google. It certainly wasn't " konnichiwa" anyway! News reporting I've seen in the Anglophone media has mentioned that his style was, although formal, perhaps surprisingly direct. In any case, the difficult courtly register of his father's 1945 broadcast seems to be a thing of the past. Or is it, behind the scenes, or in the emperor's new year addresses, for example? Next, I noticed throughout that he often ended sentences with a word that sounded like [mas] (nine or so times by my count), with most of them ending in what sounded like [te.i.mas]. What does this mean? Finally, has anyone got a link to either a video with a dubbed English translation of the full speech, or a transcript of it in English. BBC and others have been broadcasting excerpts totalling about 30 seconds, but it would be good to read the full thing. Actually, one more thing! I noticed that he bowed at the start and end, something which as it happens I asked about yesterday at Talk:Etiquette in Japan. Any input welcome. Thanks! 82.32.186.24 ( talk) 15:36, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict:merge with previous question) I've read that when Emperor Hirohito addressed the Japanese people to tell them WW2 was lost, few could understand anything he said, because he spoke some sort of "court Japanese" or formal archaic Samurai Japanese rather than the language of the people. Was the difference one of vocabulary and grammar, or just of pronunciation, so that when written out everyone would read and understand it? Did Hirohito give public speeches in the postwar years, and did he switch to common Japanese? In English, what would be an analog to Hirohito's non-understood 1945 radio speech? Would it be as if Queen Elizabeth delivered in address in Shakespearean English? Now Emperor Akihito has addressed the Japanese people on TV. Did he speak ordinary Japanese, and did he also speak Hirohito's formal version? Edison ( talk) 16:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Dressed in a dark suit, and seated against a backdrop designed to evoke the appearance of a traditional paper screens, Emperor Akihito spoke in mannered but modern Japanese – not the formal courtly language which is incomprehensible to many of the country’s residents. [1]
I don't know Japanese that well, but do know Chinese, and the Chinese Wikipedia page gives a side-by-side translation of Hirohito's speech (as well as providing images of the original document) here [2]. The text is described as 日文文語體 (Classical Japanese, Bungo-文語), and as a comparison of the translation between the original text and the formal (i.e., non-colloquial) Chinese translation attests, is essentially lexically very similar to Classical Chinese (but syntactically very different due to the inversion of the word order). The pronoun the Emperor used to refer to himself (朕) was the form of address that Qin Shihuang used to refer to himself, and the text is terse and very literary in form. The important thing to keep in mind is that Hirohito's speech was a recitation of a written document that was composed in an archaic style utilized solely for written correspondence, it was (I'm 98% sure) not reflective of any spoken vernacular utilized at court. I found the Japanese text of Akihito's speech on the Imperial Household's Agency's website:
この度の東北地方太平洋沖地震は,マグニチュード9.0という例を見ない規模の巨大地震であり,被災地の悲惨な状況に深く心を痛めています。地震や津波による死者の数は日を追って増加し,犠牲者が何人になるのかも分かりません。一人でも多くの人の無事が確認されることを願っています。また,現在,原子力発電所の状況が予断を許さぬものであることを深く案じ,関係者の尽力により事態の更なる悪化が回避されることを切に願っています。
現在,国を挙げての救援活動が進められていますが,厳しい寒さの中で,多くの人々が,食糧,飲料水,燃料などの不足により,極めて苦しい避難生活を余儀なくされています。その速やかな救済のために全力を挙げることにより,被災者の状況が少しでも好転し,人々の復興への希望につながっていくことを心から願わずにはいられません。そして,何にも増して,この大災害を生き抜き,被災者としての自らを励ましつつ,これからの日々を生きようとしている人々の雄々しさに深く胸を打たれています。
自衛隊,警察,消防,海上保安庁を始めとする国や地方自治体の人々,諸外国から救援のために来日した人々,国内の様々な救援組織に属する人々が,余震の続く危険な状況の中で,日夜救援活動を進めている努力に感謝し,その労を深くねぎらいたく思います。
今回,世界各国の元首から相次いでお見舞いの電報が届き,その多くに各国国民の気持ちが被災者と共にあるとの言葉が添えられていました。これを被災地の人々にお伝えします。
海外においては,この深い悲しみの中で,日本人が,取り乱すことなく助け合い,秩序ある対応を示していることに触れた論調も多いと聞いています。これからも皆が相携え,いたわり合って,この不幸な時期を乗り越えることを衷心より願っています。
被災者のこれからの苦難の日々を,私たち皆が,様々な形で少しでも多く分かち合っていくことが大切であろうと思います。被災した人々が決して希望を捨てることなく,身体(からだ)を大切に明日からの日々を生き抜いてくれるよう,また,国民一人びとりが,被災した各地域の上にこれからも長く心を寄せ,被災者と共にそれぞれの地域の復興の道のりを見守り続けていくことを心より願っています。
Which is written in modern colloquial Japanese (including foreign loanwords like magnitude マグニチュード). As Oda Mari pointed out, his first words were この度の konotabino, which is not a greeting, it means "this time, this particular instance". Hope this helps. 71.167.144.217 ( talk) 05:46, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
An English translation of the speech is now available online: [2] 82.32.186.24 ( talk) 18:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Do other languages also have the ambiguity of the English 'free'? I know for sure that in German and Spanish there is no way of confusing both meanings...
Finnish most certainly has no such ambiguity. Finnish has two entirely different adjectives for "free": vapaa is free as in speech, i.e. not restricted, while ilmainen is free as in beer, i.e. not costing anything. JIP | Talk 20:58, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
There is no ambiguity in English when you understand that "free" beer or software is an abbreviated way of saying "free of charge". ← Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:05, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
In fact, "gratis" to mean "free of charge" is a relatively new concept. "Gratis" actually means "(for) thanks", as noted in EO: [3] ← Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
In Polish, the word wolny is ambiguous, but in a different way: it means both "free" (as in "free speech") and "slow". Interestingly, powolny means both "slow" and "obedient", so it's at once a synonym and an antonym of wolny. "Free" as in "free beer" is darmowy, completely unrelated to wolny. — Kpalion (talk) 21:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Hi. I've noticed some languages, such as Arabic and Italian, have (in their IPA phonetic transcriptions) doubled consonants. FOr example, the word prosciutto is pronounced /prɔsˈʧuttɔ/ (scroll to the bottom, sorry it's French Wiktionary but the French just seem better at building a dictionary; the enwikt has no Italian IPA for this entry). How is the /tt/ pronounced? The only way I can think of not to run the /t/ together is to add a glottal stop in between but this would sound ridiculous even to me who does not speak Italian. 72.128.95.0 ( talk) 21:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
You can hear Prosciutto here: http://it.forvo.com/word/prosciutto/#it For PALA/PALLA see here: http://it.forvo.com/search/pala/ http://it.forvo.com/search/palla/ -- 151.51.60.184 ( talk) 02:25, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a mistake in the French Wiktionary: it should be [proʃˈʃutto] (by my dictionary), not * [prɔsˈʧuttɔ]. At any rate, there is no ʧ sound. Lfh ( talk) 10:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Are there any Italian words with the sound sequence [sʧ]? -- 84.61.170.180 ( talk) 10:38, 17 March 2011 (UTC)