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Is this correct:
Byzantium General
Later the Byzantium’s
Byzantine mosaic or Byzantium mosaic
Byzantine Empress or Byzantium Empress
The Byzantine historian Euthycius or ...you get the idea.
At this time the Byzantium’s were at war
Is this just preference. The other question is: Which of these are correct?
Tell el-Amarneh letters or Tell El-Amarneh letters
Malek el-Khamil or Malek El-Khamil
On February 18, 1229, el-Khamil signed or On February 18, 1229, El-Khamil signed
ruler of Damascus El Malik El Muathim Isa or something else?
One more thing and thanks for your help:
Is this correct:
the city’s inhabitants
Byzantine is also a noun meaning "inhabitant of Byzantium". So:
· rodii · 01:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe "Beastorn" is an alternative name for Byzantine. I've only ever come across it once, but it was a highly reputable source. Can anyone confirm this as a legitimate word? JackofOz 04:22, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
What is the noun meaning "citizens of Byzantium".
At one time, the normal term used to describe someone or something was "Argentine". The, it seems the word "Argentinian" took over. Now there semms to be a swing back towards "Argentine". Is there an actual difference in meaning/nuance between the two (like with Scottish, Scot, Scotch)? or is it a personal choice thing? Grutness... wha? 03:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
To confuse things further, there's also Argentinean, which looks just wrong to me, but has over three million google hits. Che Guevara is listed in the categories Spanish-Argentines and Category:Irish Argentineans. Henry Flower 09:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I heard this as a verb twice on the news last night. Is it even a word? It does not appear in the Wicktionary. If "warn" means to give cautionary advice before something happens, then "forewarn" seems to be redundant. If it is indeed a word, does it mean something different from "warn"? Thanks for your help. 66.213.33.2 13:51, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
But isn't a warning always in advance? So again I ask: Isn't this word redundant? 66.213.33.2 14:27, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
list of sophisticated endings .e.g. "yours, most sincerely" or "in anticipation of your valued response".
Would a decimal number be counted as plural? Examples: 0.5, 2.5, etc...
Ops. I forgot to sign my question! -- Yanwen 18:21, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I would like to know what the English phrase "trust me" means in Yiddish. Thank You for helping me search this. Amy
I have been told that there is some sort of translation for the phrase "trust me" in the Jewish language. I am looking for the translation and the meaning of the translation. If anyone can help me that would be great. Thank you - Amy
thank you very much for your help. - Amy
BBC4, Tuesday 27th June at 8.30 in the evening. (Programme - 'Never Mind the Full Stops.) The chairman, Julian Fellows, said that the expression 'Different THAN' was incorrect and that it should be 'Different TO'. I was always taught that the phrase should be 'Different FROM' As Julian Fellows is so pedantic, could you please advise which is correct? Many thanks. (The delay in contacting you was because my computer was 'down'!)
What I've heard (don't remember where though) is that "different than" is colloquial American English, "different to" is colloquial British English, and "different from" is "prescriptively correct" on both sides of the herring pond. User:Angr 23:04, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
What does the greek 'lepto' mean - I've read thin, small, long and thin, and some reference to nuts, does 'leaf like' have anything to do with it? (no redirects please) HappyVR 20:33, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
How to say how are you?
i would like to know what term or terms were previously applied (by natives) to the land masses now called north america and south america.
some have suggested to me that there may have not been any such names, however i suspect that there were,
possibly that information has been suppressed. if anyone knows the answer to this inquiry i am grateful. -- 65.8.174.177 06:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
as to the first entry above. it would seem to me that even though the native americans (euro term) were not known for traveling the oceans, that they had a concept of the lands that stretched to the four points of the compass beyond what land they actually knew of or occupied. furthermore, when the natives learned learned of other land masses (upon the arrival of explorers in 900 ad and after), how did they perceive and name this continent upon which they lived, as distinguished from the other areas overseas? as groups of people with the tendency to give names to everything natural, it would be odd if native americans did not name the area beyond their own. they probably considered their own land as that area allowed to them by their god(s). it is claimed that the north american continent was perhaps settled by asians as long ago as 27K years. it would seem strange that the land went without a place name until america was applied in the past 500 years. incidentally, there are several versions of the source of the terms for europe and asia in wikipedia. as for africa and asia, those again appear to be euro terms for non euro areas. were there indigenous terms used by the locals on those continents?? surely, not every major geographical area is named from euro name givers. within 'america' we have illinois, michigan, minnesota, massachusetts, delaware, dakotas, mississippi, iowa, and others, i am sure, that are non euro terms for moderate expanses of land. does anyone have native american knowledge of possible terms or names for all the land beyond the area of a tribe or 'nation'??
thanks. regarding gedankenexperiment. i guess what would suffice is if anyone has any information for what the natives called all the lands that extended beyond their own. and as i mentioned, once the euros were in what we call north america the notion of other lands beyond this land would have been understood by the natives. does anyone know what they called the expanse of land that included their own and the land beyond their own. many tribes were nomadic and would have provided an understanding of reach of the land. thanks for any help that provides a native term for the continents or land expanse on the continents.
Is this correct. Should I not use the comma after the date? These are introductory sentences.
Malik (400-455 B.C.), rebuilt part of the castle, as well as the walls of Lancad. or
Graham (773-789 B.C.) did a lot of work on Lancad.
Also when do I stop using B.C. or A.D. in my wrtiting after every date?
What if the title of my section is: Hittite Rule (525-333 BC) Would I still have to use BC in the dates I mention under this section?
How do I refernece the works of Josephus in the text or endnote, all of them? I'm not talking about reffering to his whole book only a refernce to a section in it.
Is this correct: Ant. of the Jews 14.4.2-4, or what about this: Wars of the Jews 2,15,8.
Lastly is it correct to put ....datinng to the 4th century BC. Is the th supposed to be smaller? What about rd, like in 3rd.
Thanks for your help, I have another question. Instead of saying ....in about 220 the soldires. Should I put .... in c. 220 the soldiers.
I am looking for the meaning AND the origin of the term "speaking truth to power".
(e-mail removed to prevent spam)
What causes a final kaf (not chaf) to appear (as in yechuneka), and does it still appear in modern Hebrew? Mo-Al 16:04, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, when I say final kaf, I mean as opposed to final chaf. I know that they are really the same letter, but I think it should be obvious what my question was supposed to be. Mo-Al 01:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I do not think these sentences sound good, can someone offer help and suggestions in writing? Do I need to work on word order?
After Artaxerxes I (Longimanus), was Xerxes II who ruled in 424. From 424 to 336, five more Persian Kings ruled over Judah. One of them, Artaxerxes III burned Jerusalem in 350 B.C. The Jews rebelled against him in 348 B.C. and some were deported to Hyrcania. The last Persian King was Darius III (Codomannus) he ruled from 336-360.
In 50 B.C., the Senate, led by Pompey, ordered Caesar to return to Rome from Gaul, where he was fighting in the Gallic Wars, and disband his army because his term as Proconsul had finished.
While Caesar was in Egypt fighting the Ptolemaic forces, Antipater of Idumea, with the High Priest, Hyrcanus II’s blessing, had led 3000 Jewish troops to Egypt to help Julius Caesar.
The reign of Artaxerxes I (Longimanus) was followed by that of Xerxes II, who ruled during 424. Five more Persian kings ruled over Judah between 424 BC and 336 BC. Notable among these was Artaxerxes III, who burned Jerusalem in 350 B.C. A Jewish rebellion against Artaxerxes III in 348 B.C. led to the deportation of some Jews to Hyrcania. The last Persian King was Darius III (Codomannus), who ruled from 360 BC to 336 BC. (as above - not be perfect, but an improvement). Grutness... wha? 07:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Quick: Does
Herostratus pluralize as "Herostratuses," "Herostrati" or "Herostratæ?" Seahen
Neon
Merlin
01:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Dear Wikipedia Volunteer,
First of all, thank you for taking this on. I appreciate Wikipedia.
I see the entry on American Sentences is on wikified. Being a form that was used by Allen Ginsberg, with little known writing about it, it is a difficult one to make a legitimte entry. I'd like for the page to be perfect, but would need some help doing that. Can you offer suggestions?
Thank you,
-- Splabman 01:03, 3 July 2006 (UTC)Paul Nelson (Splabman)
P.S> The citation needed is:
Assuming the most common American sounds of "o" are (1) as the "o" in 'most" and (2) as the "o" in "dot".
How do most reading teachers at the kindergarten level teach children how to say the word represented by the letters "to"?
If the alphabetic principle is observed -- the teacher must say the letter "o" stands for some sound.
Does the teacher say the "o" stands for the long /u/ speech-sound -- or
Does the teacher say the "o" stands for the speech-sound /uh/, because almost everyone uses that pronunciation?
Either way does not carry over to other usual sounds of the letter "o".
I am writing a teaching program and am stumped by this simple question.
Teaching the word as a sight word seems to avoid the question. Is that the only logical solution? Martirc 05:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Heck. Just try "cough, bough and enough". That'll teach em. Literally. -- Dweller 15:36, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
In the school district my two younger siblings are in - "to" and other words are taught to kindergarteners as popcorn words. THat is, important words which are spelled like other words. -- Chris S. 20:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I've been reading the capitalisation guidelines, and I think I understand but they are a bit complex in places. Could someone review my work in the shopping cart software article and comment?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.55.210.63 ( talk • contribs)
A recognised expert exponent of various arts is quite often called a "Maestro", but surely this is gender-specific... what would the female equivalent be, and is it ever used in English? Grutness... wha? 08:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
hi,can someone tell me how to spell joshua and jack in hebrew?
In English, Jack is a diminutive of John. In Hebrew, the closest thing to John that I know of is "Jonathan", which would be pronounced "Yonatan", or in Hebrew letters: "Yud, Vav, Noon, Taff, Noon." Loomis 00:17, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
In Modern Times Chaplin "ad-libs pseudo-French and Italian gibberish", and at The Funniest Joke in the World we find the immortal pseudo-German Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput. Are there any examples of pseudo-English in foreign-language films? What might it look like written down? Shantavira 12:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello, sorry for my bad english. I am correcting some articles with german contents and german titles. Some german words (after the german reform of right writing) are wrongly written with ss, p.e. Strasse. It should be correct: Straße. What is usual in english? Do you use an ß in german texts, or not? When do you use ß? Thank you for your answer. User:Bera (My login is in his moment hacked)-- 89.53.245.159 14:05, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Wasn't the ß removed under modern German spelling? Emmett5 15:43, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello, could you please help a german native speaker and tell me, when the apostroph in english is used, par example the economy's demand or German states' privilege. Is it usually what germans call Genitiv or are there other possibilities, too? Thank you very much. -- Bera 15:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Is there a formal linguistic term for colloquial interjections made mid-sentence? For instance, "How the devil are you?" or "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Any idea if there is a formal linguistic or grammatical term for these? Thanks, -- TeaDrinker 20:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Let us say that I am a student giving a philosophy lecture now; I wish to state to my listeners that I may contradict myself in the future as I learn more facts and ideas. This could happen in two years from now because my outlook will have changed.
What is the best way to articulate that in two years I will know more and come to different conclusions using future subjunctive? Inasmuch as there will be differing answers, I ask that every respondent enclose its sentence in quotation marks. Patchouli 23:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
-- 70.39.104.131 23:21, 3 July 2006 (UTC)what is the meaning of tutsalaffa? some one ask me did i know the meaning of the previous mentioned word. i'm not sure what language it is and i definetly don't what it means. can you please help?
Gwendolyn Pinckney
In the course of general cleanup I noticed that many of the people in Category:Portuguese footballers and Category:Brazilian footballers are alphabetized by (what looks like) first name instead of last (e.g. Carlos Alberto, Carlos Manuel, Gonçalves Isabelinha, Júlio César Soares Espíndola, and lots more), and the cats are quite a mess as a result. While some are categorized by their popular name, others are not, and I wanted to know if there are any special rules on this in Portuguese. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) doesn't mention any. Ziggurat 00:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I was playing the game Call of Duty 2 and while in Soviet campaign, I came across a wall with writing on it. One phrase was in Russian and the other was in German, which seemed like a "come-back' to the Russian phrase. Russian: "YAИUA ЭABOПCKAЯ." I don't know if the "П" is the right letter. It looked more like a tophat, but I can't find a letter that looks like that in Russian Alphabet. Then the German: "EINER SPINNT IMMER!" If some one could help translate those, that'd be great. Thanks. schyler 00:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
It may be that it's the handwriting and that is the letter. It looked like an underlined "П" but it is entirely possible it is just a "Д" written with poor handwriting. schyler 01:30, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Which is the plural of Stadium? Philc T E C I 00:54, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd say the plural depends on which meaning of stadium you're using. Stadium in the sense of sports venue has the plural stadiums. Stadium in the sense of an ancient unit of length equal to about 190 meters has the plural stadia. (Antenna is another word that has different plurals depending on its meaning.) User:Angr 08:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I notice a bot just updated the Chinese link for Hydrogen peroxide from 过氧化氢 to 双氧水. These look very different to me, but Google translates the first as hydrogen peroxide and the second as hydrogen peroxide solution (which is all the more confusing because the second Chinese phrase is shorter). Could someone give me a breakdown of what these characters mean? — Keenan Pepper 03:11, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Where can you find info on what aspects all languages share (i.e. how many vowel sounds ust a language have, do all languages have velar sounds, etc. [not restricted necessarily to phonetics])? Mo-Al 04:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Why has Chinese phonology been so different, it changed so much, but its syntax hasn't?
68.148.165.213 05:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know the origin of this term for television? I know the reasoning behind the term, I'm wanting to know how long the term has been around, possibly the first time it was used.
A Toronto television columnist renamed his daily column "Idiot box", referencing the fact we redirect from the term to the article "Television". He says he doesn't know the history of the term, I thought we could get more free publicity if we could tell him where it came from. -- Zanimum 12:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I asked a question about a word "tutsalaffa", this is how i recieved the word, "tuts-alaf-fa", maybe this will help a little.
gwendolyn pinckney
Hi!
I made a bet and wonder if you can say "A pest of [...]", for example "A pest of racoons", to name a big amount of racoons that's bad for the environnement.
I know you can say that in New Zealand and Australia, but is it official, academic english? My dictionaries aren't really clear about it.
Thanks for your help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.48.121.212 ( talk • contribs) 16:15, 4 July 2006
The word in Spanish for the English...love —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.15.234.143 ( talk • contribs) 16:16, 4 July 2006
What sounds are
guttural consonants in English? The article does not provide any examples. Seahen
Neon
Merlin
21:29, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
"Gutteral" is a somewhat vague term...it's not used very often.-- The ikiroid ( talk· desk· Advise me) 01:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
How would the Australian-English and Hiberno-Enlgish pronounciations of the word "international" be written in IPA?-- The ikiroid ( talk· desk· Advise me) 00:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Is "very yes" a grammatically valid construct? Seahen
Neon
Merlin
02:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm wondering if this is the standard version of this phrase. Do some folks say "There are no two ways about it"? The latter is grammatically correct, but the former seems to be the idiomatic version used in Australia.
I'm also interested in other examples of standard idiomatic expressions that don't follow normal rules of grammar. JackofOz 05:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Why do most folks tend to say "oh" when they really mean "zero", but don't replace "one" with "el"? Is it simply because "one point oh five" is easier to say than "one point zero five"? Does this happen in other languages? JackofOz 07:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Eritain, yours is the best answer I've heard yet. (Do they really still have "superiors" and "subordinates" in your part of the world?) JackofOz 11:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Also, 0 is "zero" and nothing else. 505 is "five hundred five." However, serial numbers, numbers in bases other than 10, account numbers, and the like are supposed to be read one digit at a time. However, I don't like to seize people by the collar to make them understand this.-- Patchouli 12:23, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know the origin of the expression "tare weight"? Specifically, I'm trying to determine how the word "tare" became a component of the expression.
I'd like to know what the IPA symbol is for a sound in Malayalam represented by the Samvruthokaram. By this, I mean the very last "vowel" (it's not formally counted as a vowel although I think it is a vowel sound) of the words മാവു് or അതു്. -- Grammatical error 15:12, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Many French surnames end with "ault" i.e. Arsenault, Beriault, etc. What does this suffix represent? Thanks for your time, Ash Edwards, Kingston, ON, Canada
Thanks, RiseRover. However, the site you cite is unilingual francophone. Any similar anglophone sites?
Are any of the following real words: Telharsic, Harfatum, Septomin. I can't find any mention of them in a short dictionary, but they do get many Google hits, although mostly in the form "Mathematical Anti-Telharsic Harfatum Septomin". smurrayinch ester( User), ( Talk) 19:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I was starting to work on a page about the town of Tende in France, but then found it is largely done in the French version of Wikipedia already. Is is appropriate to translate/borrow wholesale from this other version, or would that be duplicating existing Wikipedia content. If I should go ahead and translate, then to reference I would make the French Wikipedia an 'external' link, correct?
--tirussell
Also see the following:
When your translation is finished, you can add it to the list at Wikipedia:Translation into English/French#Recently completed translations. -- Mathew5000 03:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Very interesting, I was wondering about all of that too for Dutch-French-English. And what about the pictures? For me, the lack of pictures in Dutch articles is by itself a reason to read the English instead, how about their copyright? Evilbu 15:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
I was wondering if a phrase "to live healthy ever after" is grammatically correct. I really need help. I found that people use the phrase "to live healthy", but I couldn't find whether the whole phrase "to live healthy ever after" would have no grammatical errors. Thank you. -- 210.123.18.235 01:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)Anna
Is there anywhere where regional pronounciations of English are compared, or where it is described how to pronounce words in English in that dialect? Mo-Al 01:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Whoa, sorry to provoke such strong feelings. I was really interested in whether it was hard to find, because if so I could try to make it easier to find with redirects or whatnot. Sorry if I was snippy. — Keenan Pepper 16:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm learning Korean and I was wondering if anyone knows of a website (or any other place) that would have slowly spoken Korean. I've tried popular news websites such as DongA.com and NHK's Korean news radio (both have news scripts/articles with recordings) but they are both spoken rather quickly - so quickly that I can't even distingish when one word ends and another starts.
Thanks in advance, Alex Ng 05:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
There is an ongoing dispute on the talk page of this article. It has been suggested that editors with interest in linguistics would provide better insight into the problem. Would any of you mind voting on that page? 85.70.5.66 19:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi there Could anyone tell me the difference between a licence and a license? Is it the difference between English and American spelling or is there some fundamental difference of meaning? Are the terms and spelling interchangeable? Thanks! --Rosie.
"Practice" follows the same pattern; "practice" is a noun while "practise" is a verb. One way to remember that is, the word "noun" precedes the word "verb" alphabetically, just like "licence" and "practice" precede "license" and "practise" alphabetically.-- Mathew5000 08:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
In Newman's autobiography, Apologia pro Vita Sua, I presume the words Vita Sua are in the ablative. Please correct me if I am wrong. Now, could some kind person please tell me what is the ablative of the word opusThank you in advance!-- PeadarMaguidhir 06:15, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
opus is a neutral noun, third declension it's stem is oper
Now you just have to follow the rules of [ declension], compare with nomen, nomine, nominibus
Evilbu 15:17, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Did the capitalization of the first letter in a cell start because of Microsoft [maybe namely, Microsoft Word]? Thanks. 68.148.165.213 07:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
What is the English word for "diédrico"?
If it means the same in Portuguese (which is highly probable), the word is dihedral. Afonso Silva 14:23, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
hi could u help me by explaining what is a consonant.thank you.-- 203.194.97.65 14:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)arun mascarenhas
in English it is any letter other than a, e, i, o, u, or y. Further, y is a consonent when pronounced as in "yay" instead of as at the end of "happy". (This is stupid rule, since an English R should be a vowel too, since you can say rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and it's between the u of turd and the e of red. Whatever) also, the consonant article starts off at the deep end, in such cases we should point the guy at the simple english wikipedia article too. 82.131.184.144 22:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC).
I have a doubt. The present translation for "União dos Jovens Comunistas" is Young Communist League (I think it should at least be "Communist Youth League) and the translation for "União dos Estudantes Comunistas" is Communist Students League. Although the Portuguese word "União" means "Union" in English, but the word "Union" is related with trade unions, however, my dictionary also translates "Union" as "League". What should I use? Mário 14:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
The question a few threads up about the phrase "to live healthy ever after" made me think about adjectives that end in the letters 'ly', such as lovely and comely. Now, normally an adverb is formed by adding 'ly' to an adjective. But what if you wanted to convert one of these adjectives to an adverb? e.g. would it be appropriate to say "he kissed her lovely"? Lovelyly (or lovelily) wouldn't work, I'm sure. Maybe you would just have to change the sentence to read "he kissed her in a lovely way." -- Richardrj 14:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
hi As we know Eritrea is a small nation which is located in East Africa. There are nine(9) languages in that country which are spoken by its people. The languages are Tigrigna, Arabic, Tigre, Saho, Kunama,Hidareb(Bedawet), Nara, Bilen and Afar. I want to know the meaning of " How are you?" by these all languages?
Am I the only person who thinks that the Persian language sounds a lot like Italian? Other than the fact that they're both Indo-european, is there anything else that would make them sound so similar?-- The ikiroid ( talk· desk· Advise me) 18:06, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
hi, i´m in brazil at the mo (yay!) and just wanted a few things clarified as no one here really seems to know. i´ve always assumed that (in the english language)latin america meant central america (mexico, panama etc) + south america. is this true or are latin and south synonyms in this, context (eg, portuguese is the most spoken language in south america). also, does anyone know the portuguese (br) for gay? obviously the international"gay" is used but is there a more used local variant? something analogous to pédé in french? thanks! 201.32.177.211 18:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
User:Angr, are you a man
the like minded men sentiment was closer to the mark (only for fashion tips, i promise). thanks for the answers though. 201.9.82.170 23:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC) (different number but i am the same person, honest)
anyone know why it did that? put me in a yellow box?
If you're interested, take a look at Term for gay in different languages. It will probably have everything you need. — D a niel (‽) 11:23, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
When languages with grammatical gender create new words or names, which gender do they choose for the new word/name? I'm especially wondering about German, but perspective about any language would be interesting. PeepP 22:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
If there is a German synonym or at least a word that has a similar meening to the new word the gender of the old German word will be used. (das Treffen, Treffen=meeting, das Meeting) (die The official gender is decided by the "Duden" whose editors adapt to the common opinion. Of course there are a lot of exeptions. (die Verabredung, Verabredung=date, das Date)
I don't know about German, but in Russian it is usually based on how the words sounds. If it sounds masculine (e.g. ends in a consonant) it would be masculine, if it ends in -a, it would be feminine, and probably neuter otherwise. -- Ornil 21:48, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't wish to edit, but I need an answer to the following question:
What is such a word, like deed, eye, pop and so on, called?
These are words that are spelled the same regardless whether they are spelled frontwards or backwards.
They are, I believe, a specific category of word, similar to, but not particularly like words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings depending how they are used, or are pronounced differently depending upon the context in which they are used (re: read, pronounced reed or red depending on verb-tense)
My email is [email address removed]
Thank you.
Richard F. Kobel —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.245.129.10 ( talk • contribs) 23:37, 7 July 2006
These words are
Palindromes.
John254
23:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you John254. rfk--23:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I am curious how other people would translate the phrase 'Jedi Knight' into the those two classical languages. Would it be something like 'Equites Iedae'? 'Equites Jidai' (to reflect the Japanese origin of the word) or something else? thanks
Duomillia 01:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Reading English, I've occasionally seen the use of the "umlaut", as in the word "naïve". Is this a true English usage or is it simply a reproduction of uses of the umlaut in foreign languages. Does the umlaut exist in English? Loomis 01:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Duomillia 01:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
The surname Bronte was sometimes seen spelled with a diaeresis over the e, presumably to stop linguistically challenged Englishpersons from pronouncing it as "Bront". JackofOz 03:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
The Economist Style Guide says "On words now accepted as English, use accents only when they make a crucial difference to pronunciation: cliché, soupçon, façade, café, communiqué, exposé (but chateau, decor, elite, feted, naive).
If you use one accent (except the tilde—strictly, a diacritical sign), use all: émigré, mêlée, protégé, résumé.
Put the accents and cedillas on French names and words, umlauts on German ones, accents and tildes on Spanish ones, and accents, cedillas and tildes on Portuguese ones: Françoise de Panafieu, Wolfgang Schäuble, Federico Peña. Leave the accents off other foreign names."-- 69.171.123.148 15:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
In asking the question, I was only really concerned with those "umlauts" that are used in the diacritic sense, as French is the only language other than English that I have any real proficiency in. I was therefore only referring to the "umlaut" as used in French, while it slipped my mind that it's used in German in an entirely different manner. It also slipped my mind that the "umlaut" (though I doubt they refer to it as such, so I'll just call it the "two dots") is even used in Russian, as in the letter "ë", pronounced "yo". Thanks for all the responses! Loomis 19:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
there is, of course, actual umlaut in English. For example when you say Wednesday (not Wodnesday). dab (ᛏ) 08:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone help me translate this text from the image Image:Arowanakartecele4.jpg on the Commons?
Verbreitungskarte Fotografiert von Marcel Burkhard alias cele4
Thanks in advance. -- Ginkgo100 talk · contribs 03:18, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Just what does it mean, "Playing post office", also a game called "pillow", and what are "pigs-in-clover? These phrases are found on pages 38 and 39 of the book "Is Sex Necessary?", by James Thurber and E.B. White, published 1929 Harper and Brothers.-- 70.23.11.212 03:34, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Sometimes, in the flow of a narrative (particularly on television) there will be a sentence which - by itself - is so mindnumbingly obvious that you would wonder at the writer's intelligence. these sentences, however, are vitally important in the flow of a narrative, in that they will introduce a new section. An example would be a TV programme I've just seen about tennis players which dealt with current top players, then said: "Some tennis players have been in the game longer than most", before going on to talk about people like Agassi. The sentence by itself, though, is almost at the point of being a tautology. My question is, is there an actual technical term for these bland yet important "link sentences"? Grutness... wha? 07:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I have an example. The founder of a company I worked for had a newspaper interview where he actually said "Companies which design a product before constructing it have a substantial advantage over those which don't". LOL StuRat 20:28, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I've studied Esperanto to an intermediate level, but I've never found any clarification about the obsure "ij" ( [4]) and "oŭ" ( [5]) dipthongs. Everything I have read suggests that these are phonotactically precarious, but I've never seen any documentation specifying how to pronounce them, or the rules about their usage.
Does anybody have insight on this? -- Pifactorial 06:42, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Is "ij" the same as "ий" in Russian? (Not that I know how to pronounce that, either :P) -- Pifactorial 02:22, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Just about any discussion on the differences between American and British English says that "bomb" means "failure" in American English, but "success" in British English. Is a bomb really a success in the U.K., or is this in the same category as the conception that the Eskimos have 72 words for snow? Bruised
"John filed the article without reading it."
Context: I am told by a linguist friend:
"Which article did John file without reading?" is OK, but * "Which article did John file without reading it?" is ungrammatical.
I am not a native speaker of English, so I would appreciate comments from native speakers. Is there any logical explanation for the ungrammaticality of the above sentence?
Thanks Vineet Chaitanya
Your linguist friend was correct, it wasn't right, but I don't know which rules it violates, I just know it sounds horrible. StuRat 15:56, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Chomsky's core assumption that "there are things no amount of learning will teach you" is simply wrong, and it appears that by now he stops at nothing to save appearances (not surprising, considering the 40 years people wasted with this idea of his). The sentence is ungrammatical, as Shantavira points out above. Of course it may still be "performed" in real life, because, let's face it, native speakers say lots of ungrammatical things, all day long. Which doesn't just make them grammatical, only after a 'mistake' becomes acceptable and is being said consciously can you say it has been admitted into grammaticality. dab (ᛏ) 08:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Does not the following notice support the grammaticality of the sentence under consideration? "CAUTION: DO NOT SIGN THIS DOCUMENT WITHOUT READING IT IN ITS ENTIRETY AND CAREFULLY." Vineet Chaitanya
"What article did John file without reading it?" I also take this opportunity to thank all the respondents.
--Vineet Chaitanya
Hey Folk,
There is an error in the word usage in the section "demon" where the words Daemon and Djinn are used as "other examples". I wasn't able to edit this as it is erronious information. The words Djinn and Daemon are not the same as demon... I am sending this into you folk as essentially it is a language problem.
Personally I find the use of the word Daemon in place of Demon a sign of complete ignorance on behalf of the author. Either that or an act of disrespect for the actual meaning of the word.
Regards,
Grant
Looking for a word that means something similar to "to think it necessary". Thanks, -Kyle
depending on how strongly you think something is necessary, maybe you could simply "call for" it (think it necessary), and similarly advocate or prescribe it?
This calls for immediate action: "This means immediate action is necessary!" He called for immediate action: "She thought immediate action was necessary!"
Consider "insist on".
82.131.188.248 15:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
What does the "Keryo" in "Keryo-Pente" (the name of a variant of the game Pente) mean?
ive gone as far as going to "list of latin phrases" and memorizing words and phrases. ive done pretty well, its been about 2-3 days and ive memorized about 30-40 words. the thing is, i dont know how to use the words in proper grammar. is there a good site that teaches everything about learning the latin language? gratias =) - PitchBlack
Does anyone know of a language conventionally written in the Latin alphabet in which a vowel sound is represented by some letter other than the traditional vowel letters a e i o u y or some letter developed from these (e.g. œ æ ø ə, vowel letters modified by diacritics and the like)? The only examples I can think of are (1) Welsh, where w represents /u/, and (2) the conventional transliteration of the Cherokee syllabary, where v represents [ə̃] (but this doesn't really count because Cherokee is usually written in the syllabary, and the v is just used in transliterations). User:Angr 13:51, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
How about Latin itself, which used "v" represent "u"? -- Chris S. 22:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The title/name " RAMTV" (pronounced: ram:t:v:) has to be in capitals, because its an acronym of names, like e.g. " MVRDV". so it doesnt make sense to write "Ramtv" as Wikipedia automatically "corrects". How can i capitalize it? Can anybody do it for me? thanks
-- Robsed 14:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
sorry, if i click 'move'it says that i am not logged in although i am. could it be because my account is new? could you do it please? -- Robsed 15:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
hi Before 2 days i have asked the following question:- As we know Eritrea is a small nation which is located in East Africa. There are nine(9) languages in that country which are spoken by its people. The languages are Tigrigna, Arabic, Tigre, Saho, Kunama,Hidareb(Bedawet), Nara, Bilen and Afar. I want to know the meaning of " How are you?" by these all languages? And i get an answer from you. How ever from the lists of languages you gave me,i get only the answers of Tigrigna, Arabic and Bilen. By thanking for the answers you already gave me, i am also asking you to give me the answers for the rest 6 languages.
Im playing a World War 2 style video game and theres German messages spray painted everywhere. One in particular stands out: Einer Spinnt Immer! I tried an online translater but I couldnt get any results... Thanks a lot!!
What are the current politically-correct terms for describing cripples and retarded people? -- 67.185.172.158 18:40, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree that "mentally handicapped" is the best term. The Wikipedia article handicapped notes correctly that the term can be pejorative. In any event it strikes the ear as out-of-date and slightly ignorant. Better adjectival phrases are "developmentally disabled" and "mentally disabled" (see Developmental disability). Contrary to the heading of this section of the page, these phrases are not euphemisms. Rather, these terms constitute accurate, neutral, understandable terminology. -- Mathew5000 02:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I have a tiny question. Is there any diminutive form of "hare" in English (like зайчик is diminutive form of заяц in Russian), i.e. what is the word for little hare, for unmatured hare? ellol 21:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Is is past, or passed?
It stretched horizontally from the Pithom (near the Nile) past Shur.
Quick: Do I put a comma after Philistines?
Its ancient name — Way of the Philistines was a reference to the route passing through the Philistine Plain.
Also,
descending southeastwardly to the foot of the mountain .... or descending southeast to the foot of the mountain.
How does this sound?
It descends southwardly into the city with a slight deflection to the east; ending its course at the Pool of Siloam
Also if you look in most books, there are commas used after the em-dash.
Thanks for you help. Also is this sentence correct? The books are new. I gueess they will start and end, with an em-dash and use a comma after another phrase. So when do you uses a semi-colon?
The former city would principally serve the temple; however, some people lived there as well
I'm writing sentences for a psychological study, and I'm having trouble a certain subset of verbs. What I'd like to know is: do these verbs belong to some specific class, or part of speech, that I could use to refer to them?
Basically, the subset of verbs that I'm interested in are those that could fit within this sentence:
"The box ______ the boy"
For example, verbs I could have include
The box interested the boy, because it was brown The box pleased the boy, as it was very large The box irritated the boy, because it was in the way The box angered the boy The box puzzled the boy The box inspired the boy The box annoyed the boy etc.
Can anyone help me describe these verbs?
They're all transitive, but that doesn't help because other transitive verbs don't fit ("the box kicked the boy" is no good). They seem to be verbs that explain the effect an inanimate object has on an animate object (obviously they can be used for other things as well, but that's not what I'm interested in).
My main problem is that I need to find verbs that can fit within the sentence, and are also relatavely common in the English language. For some reason, none of the verbs I can find that fit the pattern are as common as verbs such as "work", "write", "accept", "tell", etc. I can only find about 20 or so verbs that fit the pattern, so it would probably help if I had some kind of name for them, or well-understood description.
Thanks for any help or advice. — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 15:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, thanks for the replies so far. I didn't get exactly what I was looking for, but this is mostly because I don't know what I'm looking for, which makes it difficult to ask. Dbmag, that comment about who all the sentences could be rearranged to form "the box made the boy interested" is very interesting and helpful. I guess my real problem is this: The form of the sentence is one in which you'd expect the subject to be acting on the object, like "the dog bit the man". However, in this case the subject has no agency, and so isn't doing anything itself. Really, it's the boy that is getting pleased or whatever. I guess this is why Dbmag mention "reflexive" verbs. It seems like only a score or so of common verbs can fill this role. — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 20:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Should the name of this article — Alentejo Central — be changed to the English version, "Central Alentejo"? Mário 16:31, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
What would be the translation of "More on that story later", in Spanish?
Many Thanks,
Gabriel
"Más sobre esta historia después" is, perhaps, a reasonable translation. I'm just a Portuguese speaker, I never learned Spanish, so, you probably shouldn't trust me very much. Cheers! Mário 19:35, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
68.52.187.248 07:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Are there any websites where I can learn more about the grammar of this language? Also, did it die out in the 1700s or 1800s?
A week or two ago I was doing a search on Latin Languages on wikipedia.com. I came across a page that I found very interesting; and I have not been able to find it ever since. The page contained something I found most fascinating: a vertical language "root" tree diagram, showing the "proto" languages for all germanic languages. At the top of the diagram or "map", there were the most basic and ancient languages (including latin I believe), followed in a downward manner, with each sub-group broken apart into language that were closely associated. I was very impressed with the information it provided, especially because it because I had never seen a "language tree" before. I would greatly appreciate your efforts in helping me to find it again. I would appreciate your prompt reply. Thank you.
Jeff Gardner <email address removed to prevent spam>
Therefore these statues probably are depicting; sometimes a bull (male cow) for the body and other times a lion.
Try "Therefore, these statues are thought to depict the bodies of bulls and lions." Or "Therefore, the bodies of these statues are sometimes those of bulls, and sometimes those of lions." You could include 'are thought to be' somewhere. There are lots of possibilities, but your current sentence sounds clumsy. Keep up the work! Skittle 19:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
A few days ago here on the ref desk someone asked about EasyCruise, so I looked into that and thought I might apply for a job. So I wrote a letter. In which I state that my English is near native. So I want to be very certain I didn't make any mistakes. Could you look it over for me? Here it is:
I'm not looking for advise on how to write an application letter, but if there are any linguistic errors, please tell me. Thanks! DirkvdM 20:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Make sure you get Internet access on this job, too, so we can hear your theories that the Hawaiian Independence Movement is being brutally suppressed, and therefore the US is exactly the same of North Korea, freedomwise. As for the letter... List your "abilities", not your "properties". I never heard the expression "bits and ends", but maybe it's Britspeak. Is "Liverpudlian" really the correct word ? I suggest a resume in bullet form, not your life story. Don't ever tell anyone you're desperate for a job, that makes them think you've been turned down a lot, which makes them think there is something seriously wrong with you. Your goal should be to keep all the things which are seriously wrong with you (which I can attest to personally) hidden until you get the job. :-) StuRat 00:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
It sounds very peculiar to say you have something "engraved deeply in [your] brain". That is not a common idiom in English. Just say you are fluent in those languages. Also as someone pointed out above, only if you are presently a kid would it be grammatically correct to say "As a kid I've been exposed to Dutch". If you are no longer a kid, then the sentence should be either "As a kid I was exposed to Dutch" or "Since I was a kid I've been exposed to Dutch". Incidentally, I wouldn't use the word "kid" in a job application because it is quite informal, almost slang. "Child" is preferable. Also I wouldn't use contractions like "I've"; in a job application or other formal writing I'd say "I have" instead. -- Mathew5000 03:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with all of the above. I think 'bits and ends' may be a conflation of 'odds and ends' and 'bits and bobs'. But I think even the correct one is too casual, it should be 'helped the __ (whatever his job title was) with a variety of duties' or something. I too will restrain myself from comment on the style since you asked people to, but giving my personal opinion, I think - as an intro to a resume/job app - the letter sucks hairy balls.-- Anchoress 03:17, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
of course Liverpudlian is the correct term! i'm finding it hard not to comment on the style too...i would just like to say that a lot of it is too conversational for a formal job application - starting off with 'Hi!' is not going to impress. (oh and also, a lot of people find Liverpudlian accents incredibly annoying, though i don't, being from Merseyside myself). -- 81.111.23.140 08:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I know you don't want any advice on style, but I still think you would be much more likely to be successful if you wrote a concise CV (or "Resume" as I think people call them in the USA) with a brief business-like covering letter such as this one:
Dear Sir,
I would like to apply for a job with EasyCruise, and am willing to do any kind of work. I have a variety of skills and aptitudes that may be of use to you, including having a pleasant and friendly personality.
I can speak fluent English, German, and Dutch, plus conversational French and Spanish and some Indonesian. I can play the guitar and the piano. My previous employment was as a photographer.
My previous sailings have been on Pelni ships in Indonesia and the Golden Plover in Australia. My hobbies are windsurfing and boat sailing.
I enclose my Curriculum Vitae and look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
The "Dear Sir" and "Yours sincerely" could be changed if you want to try to write in American English rather than British English. Good luck. -- 62.253.52.35 00:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi! There's been a recent discussion on the correct use of the word canon on this board, but somehow I suspect none of us are really linguists. Could someone with some expertise on the subject care to check it out, and comment? Thanks! -- Byakuren 21:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Is is good to start a sentence with the word thus, and if so should a comma follow. Also do semicolon's usually follow the word thus?
Should I put a semicolon after himself?
Later Jason was supplanted for a greater sum by a worse man than himself, Menelaus.
No, there should not be a semicolon after "himself" in that sentence. The comma is correct, but a colon or an em-dash would be better in my view. The word "himself" there is nonstandard; grammatical purists would say it should be "he". I might recast the sentence as follows:
-- Mathew5000 03:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
In the senses we're talking about, thus is a conjunctive adverb. It's in the same category as words such as however, therefore, and consequently. There is nothing wrong with starting a sentence with one of these words. When one does start a sentence, it should always be followed by a comma. Here's an example:
Another acceptable construction follows:
Notice that the comma is still used when thus follows a semicolon. Both these example are grammatically correct. Note, though, that it's better to use the semicolon option to combine two short sentences and the separate-sentences option to avoid one very long sentence. A semicolon never follows thus in this initial position.-- El aprendelenguas 22:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I recently was at a funeral in a Luthern Church and on the wall there was a carving of a Bible with the letters "V D M A" - - all in capital letters. I asked the Minister what it meant and he said he did not know. Can you tell me what those letters mean, please?
Michael L. Haines
I recently came across this trivia question. I'm not sure if it's a well known question or not (sounds like it may be) but I want to have a closer look at this.
Q: Only one of the following sentences cannot be disambiguated to parse as a grammatical, meaningful sentence in English, using standard grammatical rules. Which one is the agrammatical sentence?
The answers claim that b) is wrong, and describes the disambiguated a), c) and d) as such:
I've got no problem with those answers, though most people will admit that a) is a little bit too sketchy to actually be interesting.
My problem is that if I take b) and attempt to disambiguate it:
I get a sentence that seems just as logically English as the other three. Does anyone not not not disagree with me? freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 05:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Picking up on question (a), I've seen this one used before: "The fell fell from the fell fell". That uses four distinct meanings of fell (two nouns, one adjective, one verb), but can have two different meanings: (a) The terrifying animal hide from the barren hillside fell; (b) The animal hide fell from the terrifying barren hillside. The hillside can't really fall from the animal hide, so not all combinations of the nouns, verb and adjective are possible. Though I suppose judicious use of a comma could distinguish them: (a) The fell fell, from the fell fell; (b) The fell, fell from the fell fell. Carcharoth 16:55, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
The story with (b) is that the sentence "The horse raced past the barn fell" (that's one less verb than the sentence you gave) is grammatical, but very hard to parse. It means "The horse (which was raced past the barn) fell". It's a classical example of a garden path sentence. Correspondingly the full sentence (b) can't be parsed in the same way. Which is why it's listed as ungrammatical. I am not sure whether your comma-separated version is valid or not, but I bet your instructor hasn't considered it. -- Ornil 20:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Let's consider the following sentence, where "it is" is used emphatically:
However, I have difficulties making a similar construct when the subject is in plural:
Obviously, rephrase (3) is the best solution. I'm wondering, though, whether 1) and 2) are correct? Both sound square. 1) doesn't sound so odd to me (I'm not a native speaker), but the plural/singular discrepancy bugs me... Duja 11:40, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Problem or no problem, I'm not sure why there's a need for deliberately fussy language. "Investors decide where to put the money, not the government." seems to work admirably. -- Dweller 12:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
any answers to these clues
the friendly trade union (*m*c*s)
one desiring to resemble someone else (7)
the concordant trade union (6)
saint giving name to "danse"(5)
yuor correct it is wannabe
a bit more help please
place for tree cultivation (9(
highland dance 5 i think it is f*i**
one who is past it 3-4
flower used in hanging baskets 7 (Petunia)
having very little width or substace 5,4
should be wafer-thin sucessful piece of business(ironical) 3,4
i am thankful to all of you 4 helping me
In this sentence: Madeline is a better badminton player than me even though she learned the game only a few months ago.
What is the subject/object? If something is wrong with it, how do you correct it? Thanks.
I really enjoy cryptic crosswords, so today I picked a few words at random and tried my hand at making some clues. Question: Can anyone here that does cryptics solve these clues? Are they any good? Any thoughts much appreciated!
Boil center of the feast (4) Weave cord to fabricate (6) Later, you and me topless in turf mix-up (6) Segments of loci tie separate towns (6) In between two articles about a plot (4)
Thanks! Madd4 Max 15:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank's for all the thoughts! I wasn't so sure about #3, because I didn't know if the u and e were really "in" the mixed-up turf. The surface reading sounded a little better than "Later, both of you in confused fret", which was my other possibility. Thanks all! Madd4 Max 19:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Why is the field in soccer called a "pitch"?
it's not really a soccer term, the playing areas of Cricket, Field Hockey and many other sports are referred to as 'pitches'. it's like asking why is a duck called a duck? or why is a building called a building? i'm sure the answers lie in the many languages that English is derived from, but then i'm sure it goes further back to the languages that they evolved from, so it's a bit of a hard question to answer really. -- 81.111.23.140 18:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC) -- Alex.dsch 18:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC) (sorry i was logged out originally)
From the Rio de Janeiro article, it says the people discovering the bay in 1502 named it Rio de Janeiro, "River of January", but the article goes on to say that river does not mean what it does now. It says: At the time, river was the general word for any large body of water. Can anyone explain or elaborate on this? Is it just a Spanish language thing, or a general thing? I've asked at the talk page, and got no response yet. Carcharoth 16:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
This is a continuation of a question I had above, but phrased slightly differently:
What is the difference between the verbs "interested" and "enjoyed"? Specifically, why does the sentence "The box interested the boy" make sense, while the sentence "The box enjoyed the boy" doesn't?
In the class of "interested", other verbs such as "annoyed", "pleased", "amused", "angered" and so on all fit. In the class of "enjoyed", other verbs such as "hated", "liked", "adored", "loathed" and so on don't fit.
Is there a name for the difference between the two types of verbs? Obviously, it has to do with agency/animacy, and whether the effect is on the subject or the object(?), but is there a precise way to describe them? Thanks (again)! — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 16:29, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Did Bangkok share the same Language with Japan in the 1970's? If no, What are the differences?
Thank you,
Matt
what does l'via l'viaquez mnean?
Hi - are there any English grammar experts out there. There are 13 tenses in the English language and I'm really stuck on a few of them - they seem very confusing. Would anyone know what tenses are in use here, thank you. Cheers, Michael.
1. I wish I had more time to finish this exercise.
2. When you have finished, you can go home.
3. I'm meeting some friends at the pub tonight.
4. We've got the next lesson in the language lab.
5. We're off to the cinema later.
Thanks, Michael-- Pishoghue2003 22:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Is it present-day, present day or modern day?
I think present day means now, while modern day means now or recently. For example, you would say "there have been X shuttle flights up to the present day" while "modern day aircraft" might include anything built since World War 2. StuRat 01:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello,
i'm a french native speaker and fixed an article, but my english is not 100 pure and correct. I'd like someone to review the article and make it in better english. Where do i ask for that kind of help?
Thanks!
(This may not be a Language question but I'll try here first). There are English surnames such as Brain(e), Head, Tongue, Cheek, H[e]art, Leg(ge), Tooth, Bottom, Foot, Bone, Kneebone, Finger, Hand, Hair, Kidney, Spine, Neck, Sole, Shin(n), Back ..... (keep adding others if you know of them). How did people ever get named after body parts? JackofOz 06:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Am looking for a word that means,a time or a situation when one nolonger feels the fire of love of romance or rather in love that ever existed in the initial stages of affair or marriage. this is ussually caused by anumber of situations that rises after people stay together like parenting, education and finances.
I would like to know the meaning of the words bromwed and bromwel
What is a phrase like this called? " A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"
(1) You can/may vote for whomever you want irks me, but for reasons I can't fully explain. I suppose the conclusion to the phrase is to vote for, but I think with that terminus unstated the sentence is incomplete. My solution would be to say You may vote for whoever it is for whom you want to vote, but that's a little unwieldy; similarly, You may vote for for whomever you want is (or at least sounds to be) manifestly wrong. Is the original grammatically and syntactically correct (or, if not, so much clearer than any technically correct phrasing as to be superior to the latter)?
(2) Often, especially in the context of sports, one uses the construction X joins Y as the only two individuals to have Z (e.g., Kobe Bryant joins Wilt Chamberlain as the only players in NBA history to have scored at least 80 points in a single game). As (1), this phrasing vexes, but once more for inexplicable reasons. I guess I'd say Kobe Bryant becomes, after/alongside Wilt Chamberlain, one of just two players in NBA history to have scored at least 80 points in a single game, but that's a bit wordy and perhaps periphrastic. Is the original alright—if a bit unsettling—or is there some superior alternative I've overlooked? Thanks in advance. 68.254.189.141 16:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Is it a coincidence that TLC not only stands for "tender loving care" but also "tastes like chicken" and "thin layer chromatography"? What is the connection?-- 64.12.116.134 17:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Are the atomic elements considered proper names and thus need capitalized? An example might be: "The substance was found to contain Tungsten."
What is the message intended when using the French term while comunicating in English.
Yours,Fernando.
I would like to know how to translate from english to portuguese ?
Third Person
grammer
Does one have a question for one to answer, or does one just need to know the proper way to spell "grammar" ? StuRat 19:51, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello,
English is in practice my second language, I grab every chance I get to improve it. But recently I discovered that I am not quite sure when it comes to this :
let us take a verb ending in -ise.
Like 'organise'.
What it is now :
I organise or I organize? I organised or I organised? An organisation or an organization?
Usually I go to the internet, it quickly gives me a sentence in which it is used, buth both (even wikipedia) cases occur! It seems that the overwhelming access (and possible manipulation) to/of language doesn't eliminate errors, on the contrary it feeds them. So please enlighten me.
Thanks.
Evilbu 20:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
And that also applies to the verbs I gave? Evilbu 20:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Well I basically want it to be correct in some language. So then I can use all things I wrote down?? Evilbu 20:34, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Right, about the use on Wikipedia, the rule is to be consistent. So the first person to write an article basically decides the style. Any following editors will have to stick to that. Although I've come across the argument that an English subject needs to be in English and vice versa. That makes some sense, but I don't think it's a rule. Articles on Dutch subjects are also mostly in English English. DirkvdM 06:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Standards of English and whether words are British or American is determined by usage and not by origin. Kenneth Clark's landmark TV series was called Civilisation. Sid Meier's landmark game was called Civilization. Jooler 07:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I searched the web but couldn't find the appropriate script in Aramaic when Emily says: "I am the one who dwelt within Cain, I am the one who dwelt within Nero, I once dwelt within Judas and I was with legion. I am Belial". Also I understood almost nothing from hearing. Could someone provide any info (namely concerning letters and/or transliteration)? Thanks. -- Brand спойт 20:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I've checked but can't seem to find what I'm looking for. What is the following form of the past tense known as: "He has come into the room." (cf. He came into the room) "She has shot him." (cf. She shot him). "We've all fallen down" (cf. We all fell down). This form is becoming increasingly used in conversation (not so much in writing) in Australia when discussing a long-past action. It was traditionally used to announce something that has only just happened. For example, when people tell jokes that contain a narrative, rather than say "He did X, and she replied Y ...", it's "He's done X, and she's replied Y ...". Or when they're discussing some historical event, it's like "Oswald's gone up to the 10th floor of the building, he's opened the window, he's stuck the gun out and he's shot JFK". Fine if it happened yesterday, but it was 42 years ago and it sounds weird to say it that way at such a chronological remove. Is this purely an Australianism, or is it more widespread? Is it simply a reflection of poor education; is it to make an old story sound more immediate; or are we observing a change going on in the way that the past tense is used? JackofOz 00:36, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
What is the best way to format this sentence?
Kemal was granted the honorific name Ataturk (meaning “Father of Turks”) by the National Assembly.
That's formatted perfectly- the italics are used correctly. -- Evan Carlstrom 06:37, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Does the name JORDAN as in Jordan river originated from the hebrew word: JORED (meaning to go down) do to the fact that the river falls or goes down? Emanuel
I found the word "glottocentrism" in an article on Wikipedia. It doesn't seem to be a real word, but I know there is one which has the same meaning. What is a word meaning "considering one language to be "correct"", or "focusing one one language". The context was :"As for most South Pacific languages, classical descriptions are generally based on the system used for Indo-European languages, especially concerning grammatical classes. Today linguists try to avoid it, considering it a form of glottocentrism." So, what word should have been used? Mo-Al 18:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
glottocentrism has only 56 hits if you exclude wikipedia, but glottocentric has another 95. the meaning I predicted above is found:
while I am not sure the usage analogous to "ethnocentrism" found on wikipedia is valid. linguacentric appears to keep being spontaneously and informally re-coined, but glottocentric is the more correct term (and clearly appears in more 'learned' contexts in the google results). langmaker.com has linguacentrism listed as a neologism with the meaning required above. dab (ᛏ) 20:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
please tell me how to write "i believe" in italian letters
Municipio translates to municipality in English but does not provide the nuance of Mexican use, which uses the name of the main city also as the name of the municipio in more than 90% of the almost 2500 Mexican municipios. A municipio is not exactly a city/county combination but the use of the description city/county helps an English reader understand the municipio term, especially when describing the city itself, and then its surrounding villages and areas.
I´m having a pissing match with another contributor and seek some help in clarifying the term for Wikipedia use.
Hello,
I was interested in the origin/meaning of the phrase "short, sharp, shocked". Your site refers me to the album of the same name by Michelle Shocked(which I own), but on a MUCH older release(Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon"), you can clearly hear a gentleman say"I was short, sharp, shocked". I have even asked 2 different musicians from the UK if they could tell me it's meaning. Both told me they hadn't a clue.
Thank you, [e-mail removed]
What is the origin of the saying "bat out of hell?"
I was playing Call of Duty 2 (again) and exploring when I went in a German bunker abd came across several German phrases. I was wondering what they meant.
Thanks. schyler 23:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
The game is awesome on XBOX Live. The campaign mode is kind of long however. Anyway, they were all in a bunker, so the light was really poor, and to top it off, one of my "comrades" threw a smoke grenade, so it was kind of hard to read. The first one was written on the ceiling above a bunk bed, and for some reason, I really think it's a bible verse. The second was REALLY hard to read. I'm surprised I got that much from it. An the third, I felt kind of stupid putting it here, knowing it was like beat/destroy/defeat England or something like that, but when I put it in a machine traslation I use, I got "against narrow country," so I figured I put it up, butt it turns out it is what I thaught it was. Also, Offnen (in the second one) may have been spelt offten, often, or ofnen and there was also an "!" at the end of that one. Thanks for your help so far. schyler 13:54, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
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Is this correct:
Byzantium General
Later the Byzantium’s
Byzantine mosaic or Byzantium mosaic
Byzantine Empress or Byzantium Empress
The Byzantine historian Euthycius or ...you get the idea.
At this time the Byzantium’s were at war
Is this just preference. The other question is: Which of these are correct?
Tell el-Amarneh letters or Tell El-Amarneh letters
Malek el-Khamil or Malek El-Khamil
On February 18, 1229, el-Khamil signed or On February 18, 1229, El-Khamil signed
ruler of Damascus El Malik El Muathim Isa or something else?
One more thing and thanks for your help:
Is this correct:
the city’s inhabitants
Byzantine is also a noun meaning "inhabitant of Byzantium". So:
· rodii · 01:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe "Beastorn" is an alternative name for Byzantine. I've only ever come across it once, but it was a highly reputable source. Can anyone confirm this as a legitimate word? JackofOz 04:22, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
What is the noun meaning "citizens of Byzantium".
At one time, the normal term used to describe someone or something was "Argentine". The, it seems the word "Argentinian" took over. Now there semms to be a swing back towards "Argentine". Is there an actual difference in meaning/nuance between the two (like with Scottish, Scot, Scotch)? or is it a personal choice thing? Grutness... wha? 03:48, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
To confuse things further, there's also Argentinean, which looks just wrong to me, but has over three million google hits. Che Guevara is listed in the categories Spanish-Argentines and Category:Irish Argentineans. Henry Flower 09:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I heard this as a verb twice on the news last night. Is it even a word? It does not appear in the Wicktionary. If "warn" means to give cautionary advice before something happens, then "forewarn" seems to be redundant. If it is indeed a word, does it mean something different from "warn"? Thanks for your help. 66.213.33.2 13:51, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
But isn't a warning always in advance? So again I ask: Isn't this word redundant? 66.213.33.2 14:27, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
list of sophisticated endings .e.g. "yours, most sincerely" or "in anticipation of your valued response".
Would a decimal number be counted as plural? Examples: 0.5, 2.5, etc...
Ops. I forgot to sign my question! -- Yanwen 18:21, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I would like to know what the English phrase "trust me" means in Yiddish. Thank You for helping me search this. Amy
I have been told that there is some sort of translation for the phrase "trust me" in the Jewish language. I am looking for the translation and the meaning of the translation. If anyone can help me that would be great. Thank you - Amy
thank you very much for your help. - Amy
BBC4, Tuesday 27th June at 8.30 in the evening. (Programme - 'Never Mind the Full Stops.) The chairman, Julian Fellows, said that the expression 'Different THAN' was incorrect and that it should be 'Different TO'. I was always taught that the phrase should be 'Different FROM' As Julian Fellows is so pedantic, could you please advise which is correct? Many thanks. (The delay in contacting you was because my computer was 'down'!)
What I've heard (don't remember where though) is that "different than" is colloquial American English, "different to" is colloquial British English, and "different from" is "prescriptively correct" on both sides of the herring pond. User:Angr 23:04, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
What does the greek 'lepto' mean - I've read thin, small, long and thin, and some reference to nuts, does 'leaf like' have anything to do with it? (no redirects please) HappyVR 20:33, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
How to say how are you?
i would like to know what term or terms were previously applied (by natives) to the land masses now called north america and south america.
some have suggested to me that there may have not been any such names, however i suspect that there were,
possibly that information has been suppressed. if anyone knows the answer to this inquiry i am grateful. -- 65.8.174.177 06:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
as to the first entry above. it would seem to me that even though the native americans (euro term) were not known for traveling the oceans, that they had a concept of the lands that stretched to the four points of the compass beyond what land they actually knew of or occupied. furthermore, when the natives learned learned of other land masses (upon the arrival of explorers in 900 ad and after), how did they perceive and name this continent upon which they lived, as distinguished from the other areas overseas? as groups of people with the tendency to give names to everything natural, it would be odd if native americans did not name the area beyond their own. they probably considered their own land as that area allowed to them by their god(s). it is claimed that the north american continent was perhaps settled by asians as long ago as 27K years. it would seem strange that the land went without a place name until america was applied in the past 500 years. incidentally, there are several versions of the source of the terms for europe and asia in wikipedia. as for africa and asia, those again appear to be euro terms for non euro areas. were there indigenous terms used by the locals on those continents?? surely, not every major geographical area is named from euro name givers. within 'america' we have illinois, michigan, minnesota, massachusetts, delaware, dakotas, mississippi, iowa, and others, i am sure, that are non euro terms for moderate expanses of land. does anyone have native american knowledge of possible terms or names for all the land beyond the area of a tribe or 'nation'??
thanks. regarding gedankenexperiment. i guess what would suffice is if anyone has any information for what the natives called all the lands that extended beyond their own. and as i mentioned, once the euros were in what we call north america the notion of other lands beyond this land would have been understood by the natives. does anyone know what they called the expanse of land that included their own and the land beyond their own. many tribes were nomadic and would have provided an understanding of reach of the land. thanks for any help that provides a native term for the continents or land expanse on the continents.
Is this correct. Should I not use the comma after the date? These are introductory sentences.
Malik (400-455 B.C.), rebuilt part of the castle, as well as the walls of Lancad. or
Graham (773-789 B.C.) did a lot of work on Lancad.
Also when do I stop using B.C. or A.D. in my wrtiting after every date?
What if the title of my section is: Hittite Rule (525-333 BC) Would I still have to use BC in the dates I mention under this section?
How do I refernece the works of Josephus in the text or endnote, all of them? I'm not talking about reffering to his whole book only a refernce to a section in it.
Is this correct: Ant. of the Jews 14.4.2-4, or what about this: Wars of the Jews 2,15,8.
Lastly is it correct to put ....datinng to the 4th century BC. Is the th supposed to be smaller? What about rd, like in 3rd.
Thanks for your help, I have another question. Instead of saying ....in about 220 the soldires. Should I put .... in c. 220 the soldiers.
I am looking for the meaning AND the origin of the term "speaking truth to power".
(e-mail removed to prevent spam)
What causes a final kaf (not chaf) to appear (as in yechuneka), and does it still appear in modern Hebrew? Mo-Al 16:04, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, when I say final kaf, I mean as opposed to final chaf. I know that they are really the same letter, but I think it should be obvious what my question was supposed to be. Mo-Al 01:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I do not think these sentences sound good, can someone offer help and suggestions in writing? Do I need to work on word order?
After Artaxerxes I (Longimanus), was Xerxes II who ruled in 424. From 424 to 336, five more Persian Kings ruled over Judah. One of them, Artaxerxes III burned Jerusalem in 350 B.C. The Jews rebelled against him in 348 B.C. and some were deported to Hyrcania. The last Persian King was Darius III (Codomannus) he ruled from 336-360.
In 50 B.C., the Senate, led by Pompey, ordered Caesar to return to Rome from Gaul, where he was fighting in the Gallic Wars, and disband his army because his term as Proconsul had finished.
While Caesar was in Egypt fighting the Ptolemaic forces, Antipater of Idumea, with the High Priest, Hyrcanus II’s blessing, had led 3000 Jewish troops to Egypt to help Julius Caesar.
The reign of Artaxerxes I (Longimanus) was followed by that of Xerxes II, who ruled during 424. Five more Persian kings ruled over Judah between 424 BC and 336 BC. Notable among these was Artaxerxes III, who burned Jerusalem in 350 B.C. A Jewish rebellion against Artaxerxes III in 348 B.C. led to the deportation of some Jews to Hyrcania. The last Persian King was Darius III (Codomannus), who ruled from 360 BC to 336 BC. (as above - not be perfect, but an improvement). Grutness... wha? 07:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Quick: Does
Herostratus pluralize as "Herostratuses," "Herostrati" or "Herostratæ?" Seahen
Neon
Merlin
01:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Dear Wikipedia Volunteer,
First of all, thank you for taking this on. I appreciate Wikipedia.
I see the entry on American Sentences is on wikified. Being a form that was used by Allen Ginsberg, with little known writing about it, it is a difficult one to make a legitimte entry. I'd like for the page to be perfect, but would need some help doing that. Can you offer suggestions?
Thank you,
-- Splabman 01:03, 3 July 2006 (UTC)Paul Nelson (Splabman)
P.S> The citation needed is:
Assuming the most common American sounds of "o" are (1) as the "o" in 'most" and (2) as the "o" in "dot".
How do most reading teachers at the kindergarten level teach children how to say the word represented by the letters "to"?
If the alphabetic principle is observed -- the teacher must say the letter "o" stands for some sound.
Does the teacher say the "o" stands for the long /u/ speech-sound -- or
Does the teacher say the "o" stands for the speech-sound /uh/, because almost everyone uses that pronunciation?
Either way does not carry over to other usual sounds of the letter "o".
I am writing a teaching program and am stumped by this simple question.
Teaching the word as a sight word seems to avoid the question. Is that the only logical solution? Martirc 05:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Heck. Just try "cough, bough and enough". That'll teach em. Literally. -- Dweller 15:36, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
In the school district my two younger siblings are in - "to" and other words are taught to kindergarteners as popcorn words. THat is, important words which are spelled like other words. -- Chris S. 20:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi. I've been reading the capitalisation guidelines, and I think I understand but they are a bit complex in places. Could someone review my work in the shopping cart software article and comment?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.55.210.63 ( talk • contribs)
A recognised expert exponent of various arts is quite often called a "Maestro", but surely this is gender-specific... what would the female equivalent be, and is it ever used in English? Grutness... wha? 08:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
hi,can someone tell me how to spell joshua and jack in hebrew?
In English, Jack is a diminutive of John. In Hebrew, the closest thing to John that I know of is "Jonathan", which would be pronounced "Yonatan", or in Hebrew letters: "Yud, Vav, Noon, Taff, Noon." Loomis 00:17, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
In Modern Times Chaplin "ad-libs pseudo-French and Italian gibberish", and at The Funniest Joke in the World we find the immortal pseudo-German Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput. Are there any examples of pseudo-English in foreign-language films? What might it look like written down? Shantavira 12:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello, sorry for my bad english. I am correcting some articles with german contents and german titles. Some german words (after the german reform of right writing) are wrongly written with ss, p.e. Strasse. It should be correct: Straße. What is usual in english? Do you use an ß in german texts, or not? When do you use ß? Thank you for your answer. User:Bera (My login is in his moment hacked)-- 89.53.245.159 14:05, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Wasn't the ß removed under modern German spelling? Emmett5 15:43, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello, could you please help a german native speaker and tell me, when the apostroph in english is used, par example the economy's demand or German states' privilege. Is it usually what germans call Genitiv or are there other possibilities, too? Thank you very much. -- Bera 15:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Is there a formal linguistic term for colloquial interjections made mid-sentence? For instance, "How the devil are you?" or "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Any idea if there is a formal linguistic or grammatical term for these? Thanks, -- TeaDrinker 20:14, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Let us say that I am a student giving a philosophy lecture now; I wish to state to my listeners that I may contradict myself in the future as I learn more facts and ideas. This could happen in two years from now because my outlook will have changed.
What is the best way to articulate that in two years I will know more and come to different conclusions using future subjunctive? Inasmuch as there will be differing answers, I ask that every respondent enclose its sentence in quotation marks. Patchouli 23:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
-- 70.39.104.131 23:21, 3 July 2006 (UTC)what is the meaning of tutsalaffa? some one ask me did i know the meaning of the previous mentioned word. i'm not sure what language it is and i definetly don't what it means. can you please help?
Gwendolyn Pinckney
In the course of general cleanup I noticed that many of the people in Category:Portuguese footballers and Category:Brazilian footballers are alphabetized by (what looks like) first name instead of last (e.g. Carlos Alberto, Carlos Manuel, Gonçalves Isabelinha, Júlio César Soares Espíndola, and lots more), and the cats are quite a mess as a result. While some are categorized by their popular name, others are not, and I wanted to know if there are any special rules on this in Portuguese. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) doesn't mention any. Ziggurat 00:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I was playing the game Call of Duty 2 and while in Soviet campaign, I came across a wall with writing on it. One phrase was in Russian and the other was in German, which seemed like a "come-back' to the Russian phrase. Russian: "YAИUA ЭABOПCKAЯ." I don't know if the "П" is the right letter. It looked more like a tophat, but I can't find a letter that looks like that in Russian Alphabet. Then the German: "EINER SPINNT IMMER!" If some one could help translate those, that'd be great. Thanks. schyler 00:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
It may be that it's the handwriting and that is the letter. It looked like an underlined "П" but it is entirely possible it is just a "Д" written with poor handwriting. schyler 01:30, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Which is the plural of Stadium? Philc T E C I 00:54, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd say the plural depends on which meaning of stadium you're using. Stadium in the sense of sports venue has the plural stadiums. Stadium in the sense of an ancient unit of length equal to about 190 meters has the plural stadia. (Antenna is another word that has different plurals depending on its meaning.) User:Angr 08:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I notice a bot just updated the Chinese link for Hydrogen peroxide from 过氧化氢 to 双氧水. These look very different to me, but Google translates the first as hydrogen peroxide and the second as hydrogen peroxide solution (which is all the more confusing because the second Chinese phrase is shorter). Could someone give me a breakdown of what these characters mean? — Keenan Pepper 03:11, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Where can you find info on what aspects all languages share (i.e. how many vowel sounds ust a language have, do all languages have velar sounds, etc. [not restricted necessarily to phonetics])? Mo-Al 04:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Why has Chinese phonology been so different, it changed so much, but its syntax hasn't?
68.148.165.213 05:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know the origin of this term for television? I know the reasoning behind the term, I'm wanting to know how long the term has been around, possibly the first time it was used.
A Toronto television columnist renamed his daily column "Idiot box", referencing the fact we redirect from the term to the article "Television". He says he doesn't know the history of the term, I thought we could get more free publicity if we could tell him where it came from. -- Zanimum 12:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I asked a question about a word "tutsalaffa", this is how i recieved the word, "tuts-alaf-fa", maybe this will help a little.
gwendolyn pinckney
Hi!
I made a bet and wonder if you can say "A pest of [...]", for example "A pest of racoons", to name a big amount of racoons that's bad for the environnement.
I know you can say that in New Zealand and Australia, but is it official, academic english? My dictionaries aren't really clear about it.
Thanks for your help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.48.121.212 ( talk • contribs) 16:15, 4 July 2006
The word in Spanish for the English...love —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.15.234.143 ( talk • contribs) 16:16, 4 July 2006
What sounds are
guttural consonants in English? The article does not provide any examples. Seahen
Neon
Merlin
21:29, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
"Gutteral" is a somewhat vague term...it's not used very often.-- The ikiroid ( talk· desk· Advise me) 01:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
How would the Australian-English and Hiberno-Enlgish pronounciations of the word "international" be written in IPA?-- The ikiroid ( talk· desk· Advise me) 00:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Is "very yes" a grammatically valid construct? Seahen
Neon
Merlin
02:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm wondering if this is the standard version of this phrase. Do some folks say "There are no two ways about it"? The latter is grammatically correct, but the former seems to be the idiomatic version used in Australia.
I'm also interested in other examples of standard idiomatic expressions that don't follow normal rules of grammar. JackofOz 05:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Why do most folks tend to say "oh" when they really mean "zero", but don't replace "one" with "el"? Is it simply because "one point oh five" is easier to say than "one point zero five"? Does this happen in other languages? JackofOz 07:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Eritain, yours is the best answer I've heard yet. (Do they really still have "superiors" and "subordinates" in your part of the world?) JackofOz 11:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Also, 0 is "zero" and nothing else. 505 is "five hundred five." However, serial numbers, numbers in bases other than 10, account numbers, and the like are supposed to be read one digit at a time. However, I don't like to seize people by the collar to make them understand this.-- Patchouli 12:23, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know the origin of the expression "tare weight"? Specifically, I'm trying to determine how the word "tare" became a component of the expression.
I'd like to know what the IPA symbol is for a sound in Malayalam represented by the Samvruthokaram. By this, I mean the very last "vowel" (it's not formally counted as a vowel although I think it is a vowel sound) of the words മാവു് or അതു്. -- Grammatical error 15:12, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Many French surnames end with "ault" i.e. Arsenault, Beriault, etc. What does this suffix represent? Thanks for your time, Ash Edwards, Kingston, ON, Canada
Thanks, RiseRover. However, the site you cite is unilingual francophone. Any similar anglophone sites?
Are any of the following real words: Telharsic, Harfatum, Septomin. I can't find any mention of them in a short dictionary, but they do get many Google hits, although mostly in the form "Mathematical Anti-Telharsic Harfatum Septomin". smurrayinch ester( User), ( Talk) 19:07, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I was starting to work on a page about the town of Tende in France, but then found it is largely done in the French version of Wikipedia already. Is is appropriate to translate/borrow wholesale from this other version, or would that be duplicating existing Wikipedia content. If I should go ahead and translate, then to reference I would make the French Wikipedia an 'external' link, correct?
--tirussell
Also see the following:
When your translation is finished, you can add it to the list at Wikipedia:Translation into English/French#Recently completed translations. -- Mathew5000 03:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Very interesting, I was wondering about all of that too for Dutch-French-English. And what about the pictures? For me, the lack of pictures in Dutch articles is by itself a reason to read the English instead, how about their copyright? Evilbu 15:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
I was wondering if a phrase "to live healthy ever after" is grammatically correct. I really need help. I found that people use the phrase "to live healthy", but I couldn't find whether the whole phrase "to live healthy ever after" would have no grammatical errors. Thank you. -- 210.123.18.235 01:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)Anna
Is there anywhere where regional pronounciations of English are compared, or where it is described how to pronounce words in English in that dialect? Mo-Al 01:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Whoa, sorry to provoke such strong feelings. I was really interested in whether it was hard to find, because if so I could try to make it easier to find with redirects or whatnot. Sorry if I was snippy. — Keenan Pepper 16:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm learning Korean and I was wondering if anyone knows of a website (or any other place) that would have slowly spoken Korean. I've tried popular news websites such as DongA.com and NHK's Korean news radio (both have news scripts/articles with recordings) but they are both spoken rather quickly - so quickly that I can't even distingish when one word ends and another starts.
Thanks in advance, Alex Ng 05:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
There is an ongoing dispute on the talk page of this article. It has been suggested that editors with interest in linguistics would provide better insight into the problem. Would any of you mind voting on that page? 85.70.5.66 19:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi there Could anyone tell me the difference between a licence and a license? Is it the difference between English and American spelling or is there some fundamental difference of meaning? Are the terms and spelling interchangeable? Thanks! --Rosie.
"Practice" follows the same pattern; "practice" is a noun while "practise" is a verb. One way to remember that is, the word "noun" precedes the word "verb" alphabetically, just like "licence" and "practice" precede "license" and "practise" alphabetically.-- Mathew5000 08:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
In Newman's autobiography, Apologia pro Vita Sua, I presume the words Vita Sua are in the ablative. Please correct me if I am wrong. Now, could some kind person please tell me what is the ablative of the word opusThank you in advance!-- PeadarMaguidhir 06:15, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
opus is a neutral noun, third declension it's stem is oper
Now you just have to follow the rules of [ declension], compare with nomen, nomine, nominibus
Evilbu 15:17, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Did the capitalization of the first letter in a cell start because of Microsoft [maybe namely, Microsoft Word]? Thanks. 68.148.165.213 07:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
What is the English word for "diédrico"?
If it means the same in Portuguese (which is highly probable), the word is dihedral. Afonso Silva 14:23, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
hi could u help me by explaining what is a consonant.thank you.-- 203.194.97.65 14:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)arun mascarenhas
in English it is any letter other than a, e, i, o, u, or y. Further, y is a consonent when pronounced as in "yay" instead of as at the end of "happy". (This is stupid rule, since an English R should be a vowel too, since you can say rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and it's between the u of turd and the e of red. Whatever) also, the consonant article starts off at the deep end, in such cases we should point the guy at the simple english wikipedia article too. 82.131.184.144 22:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC).
I have a doubt. The present translation for "União dos Jovens Comunistas" is Young Communist League (I think it should at least be "Communist Youth League) and the translation for "União dos Estudantes Comunistas" is Communist Students League. Although the Portuguese word "União" means "Union" in English, but the word "Union" is related with trade unions, however, my dictionary also translates "Union" as "League". What should I use? Mário 14:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
The question a few threads up about the phrase "to live healthy ever after" made me think about adjectives that end in the letters 'ly', such as lovely and comely. Now, normally an adverb is formed by adding 'ly' to an adjective. But what if you wanted to convert one of these adjectives to an adverb? e.g. would it be appropriate to say "he kissed her lovely"? Lovelyly (or lovelily) wouldn't work, I'm sure. Maybe you would just have to change the sentence to read "he kissed her in a lovely way." -- Richardrj 14:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
hi As we know Eritrea is a small nation which is located in East Africa. There are nine(9) languages in that country which are spoken by its people. The languages are Tigrigna, Arabic, Tigre, Saho, Kunama,Hidareb(Bedawet), Nara, Bilen and Afar. I want to know the meaning of " How are you?" by these all languages?
Am I the only person who thinks that the Persian language sounds a lot like Italian? Other than the fact that they're both Indo-european, is there anything else that would make them sound so similar?-- The ikiroid ( talk· desk· Advise me) 18:06, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
hi, i´m in brazil at the mo (yay!) and just wanted a few things clarified as no one here really seems to know. i´ve always assumed that (in the english language)latin america meant central america (mexico, panama etc) + south america. is this true or are latin and south synonyms in this, context (eg, portuguese is the most spoken language in south america). also, does anyone know the portuguese (br) for gay? obviously the international"gay" is used but is there a more used local variant? something analogous to pédé in french? thanks! 201.32.177.211 18:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
User:Angr, are you a man
the like minded men sentiment was closer to the mark (only for fashion tips, i promise). thanks for the answers though. 201.9.82.170 23:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC) (different number but i am the same person, honest)
anyone know why it did that? put me in a yellow box?
If you're interested, take a look at Term for gay in different languages. It will probably have everything you need. — D a niel (‽) 11:23, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
When languages with grammatical gender create new words or names, which gender do they choose for the new word/name? I'm especially wondering about German, but perspective about any language would be interesting. PeepP 22:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
If there is a German synonym or at least a word that has a similar meening to the new word the gender of the old German word will be used. (das Treffen, Treffen=meeting, das Meeting) (die The official gender is decided by the "Duden" whose editors adapt to the common opinion. Of course there are a lot of exeptions. (die Verabredung, Verabredung=date, das Date)
I don't know about German, but in Russian it is usually based on how the words sounds. If it sounds masculine (e.g. ends in a consonant) it would be masculine, if it ends in -a, it would be feminine, and probably neuter otherwise. -- Ornil 21:48, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't wish to edit, but I need an answer to the following question:
What is such a word, like deed, eye, pop and so on, called?
These are words that are spelled the same regardless whether they are spelled frontwards or backwards.
They are, I believe, a specific category of word, similar to, but not particularly like words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings depending how they are used, or are pronounced differently depending upon the context in which they are used (re: read, pronounced reed or red depending on verb-tense)
My email is [email address removed]
Thank you.
Richard F. Kobel —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.245.129.10 ( talk • contribs) 23:37, 7 July 2006
These words are
Palindromes.
John254
23:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you John254. rfk--23:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I am curious how other people would translate the phrase 'Jedi Knight' into the those two classical languages. Would it be something like 'Equites Iedae'? 'Equites Jidai' (to reflect the Japanese origin of the word) or something else? thanks
Duomillia 01:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Reading English, I've occasionally seen the use of the "umlaut", as in the word "naïve". Is this a true English usage or is it simply a reproduction of uses of the umlaut in foreign languages. Does the umlaut exist in English? Loomis 01:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Duomillia 01:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
The surname Bronte was sometimes seen spelled with a diaeresis over the e, presumably to stop linguistically challenged Englishpersons from pronouncing it as "Bront". JackofOz 03:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
The Economist Style Guide says "On words now accepted as English, use accents only when they make a crucial difference to pronunciation: cliché, soupçon, façade, café, communiqué, exposé (but chateau, decor, elite, feted, naive).
If you use one accent (except the tilde—strictly, a diacritical sign), use all: émigré, mêlée, protégé, résumé.
Put the accents and cedillas on French names and words, umlauts on German ones, accents and tildes on Spanish ones, and accents, cedillas and tildes on Portuguese ones: Françoise de Panafieu, Wolfgang Schäuble, Federico Peña. Leave the accents off other foreign names."-- 69.171.123.148 15:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
In asking the question, I was only really concerned with those "umlauts" that are used in the diacritic sense, as French is the only language other than English that I have any real proficiency in. I was therefore only referring to the "umlaut" as used in French, while it slipped my mind that it's used in German in an entirely different manner. It also slipped my mind that the "umlaut" (though I doubt they refer to it as such, so I'll just call it the "two dots") is even used in Russian, as in the letter "ë", pronounced "yo". Thanks for all the responses! Loomis 19:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
there is, of course, actual umlaut in English. For example when you say Wednesday (not Wodnesday). dab (ᛏ) 08:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone help me translate this text from the image Image:Arowanakartecele4.jpg on the Commons?
Verbreitungskarte Fotografiert von Marcel Burkhard alias cele4
Thanks in advance. -- Ginkgo100 talk · contribs 03:18, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Just what does it mean, "Playing post office", also a game called "pillow", and what are "pigs-in-clover? These phrases are found on pages 38 and 39 of the book "Is Sex Necessary?", by James Thurber and E.B. White, published 1929 Harper and Brothers.-- 70.23.11.212 03:34, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Sometimes, in the flow of a narrative (particularly on television) there will be a sentence which - by itself - is so mindnumbingly obvious that you would wonder at the writer's intelligence. these sentences, however, are vitally important in the flow of a narrative, in that they will introduce a new section. An example would be a TV programme I've just seen about tennis players which dealt with current top players, then said: "Some tennis players have been in the game longer than most", before going on to talk about people like Agassi. The sentence by itself, though, is almost at the point of being a tautology. My question is, is there an actual technical term for these bland yet important "link sentences"? Grutness... wha? 07:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I have an example. The founder of a company I worked for had a newspaper interview where he actually said "Companies which design a product before constructing it have a substantial advantage over those which don't". LOL StuRat 20:28, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I've studied Esperanto to an intermediate level, but I've never found any clarification about the obsure "ij" ( [4]) and "oŭ" ( [5]) dipthongs. Everything I have read suggests that these are phonotactically precarious, but I've never seen any documentation specifying how to pronounce them, or the rules about their usage.
Does anybody have insight on this? -- Pifactorial 06:42, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Is "ij" the same as "ий" in Russian? (Not that I know how to pronounce that, either :P) -- Pifactorial 02:22, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Just about any discussion on the differences between American and British English says that "bomb" means "failure" in American English, but "success" in British English. Is a bomb really a success in the U.K., or is this in the same category as the conception that the Eskimos have 72 words for snow? Bruised
"John filed the article without reading it."
Context: I am told by a linguist friend:
"Which article did John file without reading?" is OK, but * "Which article did John file without reading it?" is ungrammatical.
I am not a native speaker of English, so I would appreciate comments from native speakers. Is there any logical explanation for the ungrammaticality of the above sentence?
Thanks Vineet Chaitanya
Your linguist friend was correct, it wasn't right, but I don't know which rules it violates, I just know it sounds horrible. StuRat 15:56, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Chomsky's core assumption that "there are things no amount of learning will teach you" is simply wrong, and it appears that by now he stops at nothing to save appearances (not surprising, considering the 40 years people wasted with this idea of his). The sentence is ungrammatical, as Shantavira points out above. Of course it may still be "performed" in real life, because, let's face it, native speakers say lots of ungrammatical things, all day long. Which doesn't just make them grammatical, only after a 'mistake' becomes acceptable and is being said consciously can you say it has been admitted into grammaticality. dab (ᛏ) 08:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Does not the following notice support the grammaticality of the sentence under consideration? "CAUTION: DO NOT SIGN THIS DOCUMENT WITHOUT READING IT IN ITS ENTIRETY AND CAREFULLY." Vineet Chaitanya
"What article did John file without reading it?" I also take this opportunity to thank all the respondents.
--Vineet Chaitanya
Hey Folk,
There is an error in the word usage in the section "demon" where the words Daemon and Djinn are used as "other examples". I wasn't able to edit this as it is erronious information. The words Djinn and Daemon are not the same as demon... I am sending this into you folk as essentially it is a language problem.
Personally I find the use of the word Daemon in place of Demon a sign of complete ignorance on behalf of the author. Either that or an act of disrespect for the actual meaning of the word.
Regards,
Grant
Looking for a word that means something similar to "to think it necessary". Thanks, -Kyle
depending on how strongly you think something is necessary, maybe you could simply "call for" it (think it necessary), and similarly advocate or prescribe it?
This calls for immediate action: "This means immediate action is necessary!" He called for immediate action: "She thought immediate action was necessary!"
Consider "insist on".
82.131.188.248 15:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
What does the "Keryo" in "Keryo-Pente" (the name of a variant of the game Pente) mean?
ive gone as far as going to "list of latin phrases" and memorizing words and phrases. ive done pretty well, its been about 2-3 days and ive memorized about 30-40 words. the thing is, i dont know how to use the words in proper grammar. is there a good site that teaches everything about learning the latin language? gratias =) - PitchBlack
Does anyone know of a language conventionally written in the Latin alphabet in which a vowel sound is represented by some letter other than the traditional vowel letters a e i o u y or some letter developed from these (e.g. œ æ ø ə, vowel letters modified by diacritics and the like)? The only examples I can think of are (1) Welsh, where w represents /u/, and (2) the conventional transliteration of the Cherokee syllabary, where v represents [ə̃] (but this doesn't really count because Cherokee is usually written in the syllabary, and the v is just used in transliterations). User:Angr 13:51, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
How about Latin itself, which used "v" represent "u"? -- Chris S. 22:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The title/name " RAMTV" (pronounced: ram:t:v:) has to be in capitals, because its an acronym of names, like e.g. " MVRDV". so it doesnt make sense to write "Ramtv" as Wikipedia automatically "corrects". How can i capitalize it? Can anybody do it for me? thanks
-- Robsed 14:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
sorry, if i click 'move'it says that i am not logged in although i am. could it be because my account is new? could you do it please? -- Robsed 15:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
hi Before 2 days i have asked the following question:- As we know Eritrea is a small nation which is located in East Africa. There are nine(9) languages in that country which are spoken by its people. The languages are Tigrigna, Arabic, Tigre, Saho, Kunama,Hidareb(Bedawet), Nara, Bilen and Afar. I want to know the meaning of " How are you?" by these all languages? And i get an answer from you. How ever from the lists of languages you gave me,i get only the answers of Tigrigna, Arabic and Bilen. By thanking for the answers you already gave me, i am also asking you to give me the answers for the rest 6 languages.
Im playing a World War 2 style video game and theres German messages spray painted everywhere. One in particular stands out: Einer Spinnt Immer! I tried an online translater but I couldnt get any results... Thanks a lot!!
What are the current politically-correct terms for describing cripples and retarded people? -- 67.185.172.158 18:40, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree that "mentally handicapped" is the best term. The Wikipedia article handicapped notes correctly that the term can be pejorative. In any event it strikes the ear as out-of-date and slightly ignorant. Better adjectival phrases are "developmentally disabled" and "mentally disabled" (see Developmental disability). Contrary to the heading of this section of the page, these phrases are not euphemisms. Rather, these terms constitute accurate, neutral, understandable terminology. -- Mathew5000 02:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I have a tiny question. Is there any diminutive form of "hare" in English (like зайчик is diminutive form of заяц in Russian), i.e. what is the word for little hare, for unmatured hare? ellol 21:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Is is past, or passed?
It stretched horizontally from the Pithom (near the Nile) past Shur.
Quick: Do I put a comma after Philistines?
Its ancient name — Way of the Philistines was a reference to the route passing through the Philistine Plain.
Also,
descending southeastwardly to the foot of the mountain .... or descending southeast to the foot of the mountain.
How does this sound?
It descends southwardly into the city with a slight deflection to the east; ending its course at the Pool of Siloam
Also if you look in most books, there are commas used after the em-dash.
Thanks for you help. Also is this sentence correct? The books are new. I gueess they will start and end, with an em-dash and use a comma after another phrase. So when do you uses a semi-colon?
The former city would principally serve the temple; however, some people lived there as well
I'm writing sentences for a psychological study, and I'm having trouble a certain subset of verbs. What I'd like to know is: do these verbs belong to some specific class, or part of speech, that I could use to refer to them?
Basically, the subset of verbs that I'm interested in are those that could fit within this sentence:
"The box ______ the boy"
For example, verbs I could have include
The box interested the boy, because it was brown The box pleased the boy, as it was very large The box irritated the boy, because it was in the way The box angered the boy The box puzzled the boy The box inspired the boy The box annoyed the boy etc.
Can anyone help me describe these verbs?
They're all transitive, but that doesn't help because other transitive verbs don't fit ("the box kicked the boy" is no good). They seem to be verbs that explain the effect an inanimate object has on an animate object (obviously they can be used for other things as well, but that's not what I'm interested in).
My main problem is that I need to find verbs that can fit within the sentence, and are also relatavely common in the English language. For some reason, none of the verbs I can find that fit the pattern are as common as verbs such as "work", "write", "accept", "tell", etc. I can only find about 20 or so verbs that fit the pattern, so it would probably help if I had some kind of name for them, or well-understood description.
Thanks for any help or advice. — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 15:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, thanks for the replies so far. I didn't get exactly what I was looking for, but this is mostly because I don't know what I'm looking for, which makes it difficult to ask. Dbmag, that comment about who all the sentences could be rearranged to form "the box made the boy interested" is very interesting and helpful. I guess my real problem is this: The form of the sentence is one in which you'd expect the subject to be acting on the object, like "the dog bit the man". However, in this case the subject has no agency, and so isn't doing anything itself. Really, it's the boy that is getting pleased or whatever. I guess this is why Dbmag mention "reflexive" verbs. It seems like only a score or so of common verbs can fill this role. — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 20:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Should the name of this article — Alentejo Central — be changed to the English version, "Central Alentejo"? Mário 16:31, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
What would be the translation of "More on that story later", in Spanish?
Many Thanks,
Gabriel
"Más sobre esta historia después" is, perhaps, a reasonable translation. I'm just a Portuguese speaker, I never learned Spanish, so, you probably shouldn't trust me very much. Cheers! Mário 19:35, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
68.52.187.248 07:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Are there any websites where I can learn more about the grammar of this language? Also, did it die out in the 1700s or 1800s?
A week or two ago I was doing a search on Latin Languages on wikipedia.com. I came across a page that I found very interesting; and I have not been able to find it ever since. The page contained something I found most fascinating: a vertical language "root" tree diagram, showing the "proto" languages for all germanic languages. At the top of the diagram or "map", there were the most basic and ancient languages (including latin I believe), followed in a downward manner, with each sub-group broken apart into language that were closely associated. I was very impressed with the information it provided, especially because it because I had never seen a "language tree" before. I would greatly appreciate your efforts in helping me to find it again. I would appreciate your prompt reply. Thank you.
Jeff Gardner <email address removed to prevent spam>
Therefore these statues probably are depicting; sometimes a bull (male cow) for the body and other times a lion.
Try "Therefore, these statues are thought to depict the bodies of bulls and lions." Or "Therefore, the bodies of these statues are sometimes those of bulls, and sometimes those of lions." You could include 'are thought to be' somewhere. There are lots of possibilities, but your current sentence sounds clumsy. Keep up the work! Skittle 19:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
A few days ago here on the ref desk someone asked about EasyCruise, so I looked into that and thought I might apply for a job. So I wrote a letter. In which I state that my English is near native. So I want to be very certain I didn't make any mistakes. Could you look it over for me? Here it is:
I'm not looking for advise on how to write an application letter, but if there are any linguistic errors, please tell me. Thanks! DirkvdM 20:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Make sure you get Internet access on this job, too, so we can hear your theories that the Hawaiian Independence Movement is being brutally suppressed, and therefore the US is exactly the same of North Korea, freedomwise. As for the letter... List your "abilities", not your "properties". I never heard the expression "bits and ends", but maybe it's Britspeak. Is "Liverpudlian" really the correct word ? I suggest a resume in bullet form, not your life story. Don't ever tell anyone you're desperate for a job, that makes them think you've been turned down a lot, which makes them think there is something seriously wrong with you. Your goal should be to keep all the things which are seriously wrong with you (which I can attest to personally) hidden until you get the job. :-) StuRat 00:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
It sounds very peculiar to say you have something "engraved deeply in [your] brain". That is not a common idiom in English. Just say you are fluent in those languages. Also as someone pointed out above, only if you are presently a kid would it be grammatically correct to say "As a kid I've been exposed to Dutch". If you are no longer a kid, then the sentence should be either "As a kid I was exposed to Dutch" or "Since I was a kid I've been exposed to Dutch". Incidentally, I wouldn't use the word "kid" in a job application because it is quite informal, almost slang. "Child" is preferable. Also I wouldn't use contractions like "I've"; in a job application or other formal writing I'd say "I have" instead. -- Mathew5000 03:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with all of the above. I think 'bits and ends' may be a conflation of 'odds and ends' and 'bits and bobs'. But I think even the correct one is too casual, it should be 'helped the __ (whatever his job title was) with a variety of duties' or something. I too will restrain myself from comment on the style since you asked people to, but giving my personal opinion, I think - as an intro to a resume/job app - the letter sucks hairy balls.-- Anchoress 03:17, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
of course Liverpudlian is the correct term! i'm finding it hard not to comment on the style too...i would just like to say that a lot of it is too conversational for a formal job application - starting off with 'Hi!' is not going to impress. (oh and also, a lot of people find Liverpudlian accents incredibly annoying, though i don't, being from Merseyside myself). -- 81.111.23.140 08:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I know you don't want any advice on style, but I still think you would be much more likely to be successful if you wrote a concise CV (or "Resume" as I think people call them in the USA) with a brief business-like covering letter such as this one:
Dear Sir,
I would like to apply for a job with EasyCruise, and am willing to do any kind of work. I have a variety of skills and aptitudes that may be of use to you, including having a pleasant and friendly personality.
I can speak fluent English, German, and Dutch, plus conversational French and Spanish and some Indonesian. I can play the guitar and the piano. My previous employment was as a photographer.
My previous sailings have been on Pelni ships in Indonesia and the Golden Plover in Australia. My hobbies are windsurfing and boat sailing.
I enclose my Curriculum Vitae and look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
The "Dear Sir" and "Yours sincerely" could be changed if you want to try to write in American English rather than British English. Good luck. -- 62.253.52.35 00:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi! There's been a recent discussion on the correct use of the word canon on this board, but somehow I suspect none of us are really linguists. Could someone with some expertise on the subject care to check it out, and comment? Thanks! -- Byakuren 21:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Is is good to start a sentence with the word thus, and if so should a comma follow. Also do semicolon's usually follow the word thus?
Should I put a semicolon after himself?
Later Jason was supplanted for a greater sum by a worse man than himself, Menelaus.
No, there should not be a semicolon after "himself" in that sentence. The comma is correct, but a colon or an em-dash would be better in my view. The word "himself" there is nonstandard; grammatical purists would say it should be "he". I might recast the sentence as follows:
-- Mathew5000 03:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
In the senses we're talking about, thus is a conjunctive adverb. It's in the same category as words such as however, therefore, and consequently. There is nothing wrong with starting a sentence with one of these words. When one does start a sentence, it should always be followed by a comma. Here's an example:
Another acceptable construction follows:
Notice that the comma is still used when thus follows a semicolon. Both these example are grammatically correct. Note, though, that it's better to use the semicolon option to combine two short sentences and the separate-sentences option to avoid one very long sentence. A semicolon never follows thus in this initial position.-- El aprendelenguas 22:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I recently was at a funeral in a Luthern Church and on the wall there was a carving of a Bible with the letters "V D M A" - - all in capital letters. I asked the Minister what it meant and he said he did not know. Can you tell me what those letters mean, please?
Michael L. Haines
I recently came across this trivia question. I'm not sure if it's a well known question or not (sounds like it may be) but I want to have a closer look at this.
Q: Only one of the following sentences cannot be disambiguated to parse as a grammatical, meaningful sentence in English, using standard grammatical rules. Which one is the agrammatical sentence?
The answers claim that b) is wrong, and describes the disambiguated a), c) and d) as such:
I've got no problem with those answers, though most people will admit that a) is a little bit too sketchy to actually be interesting.
My problem is that if I take b) and attempt to disambiguate it:
I get a sentence that seems just as logically English as the other three. Does anyone not not not disagree with me? freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 05:04, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Picking up on question (a), I've seen this one used before: "The fell fell from the fell fell". That uses four distinct meanings of fell (two nouns, one adjective, one verb), but can have two different meanings: (a) The terrifying animal hide from the barren hillside fell; (b) The animal hide fell from the terrifying barren hillside. The hillside can't really fall from the animal hide, so not all combinations of the nouns, verb and adjective are possible. Though I suppose judicious use of a comma could distinguish them: (a) The fell fell, from the fell fell; (b) The fell, fell from the fell fell. Carcharoth 16:55, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
The story with (b) is that the sentence "The horse raced past the barn fell" (that's one less verb than the sentence you gave) is grammatical, but very hard to parse. It means "The horse (which was raced past the barn) fell". It's a classical example of a garden path sentence. Correspondingly the full sentence (b) can't be parsed in the same way. Which is why it's listed as ungrammatical. I am not sure whether your comma-separated version is valid or not, but I bet your instructor hasn't considered it. -- Ornil 20:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Let's consider the following sentence, where "it is" is used emphatically:
However, I have difficulties making a similar construct when the subject is in plural:
Obviously, rephrase (3) is the best solution. I'm wondering, though, whether 1) and 2) are correct? Both sound square. 1) doesn't sound so odd to me (I'm not a native speaker), but the plural/singular discrepancy bugs me... Duja 11:40, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Problem or no problem, I'm not sure why there's a need for deliberately fussy language. "Investors decide where to put the money, not the government." seems to work admirably. -- Dweller 12:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
any answers to these clues
the friendly trade union (*m*c*s)
one desiring to resemble someone else (7)
the concordant trade union (6)
saint giving name to "danse"(5)
yuor correct it is wannabe
a bit more help please
place for tree cultivation (9(
highland dance 5 i think it is f*i**
one who is past it 3-4
flower used in hanging baskets 7 (Petunia)
having very little width or substace 5,4
should be wafer-thin sucessful piece of business(ironical) 3,4
i am thankful to all of you 4 helping me
In this sentence: Madeline is a better badminton player than me even though she learned the game only a few months ago.
What is the subject/object? If something is wrong with it, how do you correct it? Thanks.
I really enjoy cryptic crosswords, so today I picked a few words at random and tried my hand at making some clues. Question: Can anyone here that does cryptics solve these clues? Are they any good? Any thoughts much appreciated!
Boil center of the feast (4) Weave cord to fabricate (6) Later, you and me topless in turf mix-up (6) Segments of loci tie separate towns (6) In between two articles about a plot (4)
Thanks! Madd4 Max 15:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank's for all the thoughts! I wasn't so sure about #3, because I didn't know if the u and e were really "in" the mixed-up turf. The surface reading sounded a little better than "Later, both of you in confused fret", which was my other possibility. Thanks all! Madd4 Max 19:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Why is the field in soccer called a "pitch"?
it's not really a soccer term, the playing areas of Cricket, Field Hockey and many other sports are referred to as 'pitches'. it's like asking why is a duck called a duck? or why is a building called a building? i'm sure the answers lie in the many languages that English is derived from, but then i'm sure it goes further back to the languages that they evolved from, so it's a bit of a hard question to answer really. -- 81.111.23.140 18:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC) -- Alex.dsch 18:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC) (sorry i was logged out originally)
From the Rio de Janeiro article, it says the people discovering the bay in 1502 named it Rio de Janeiro, "River of January", but the article goes on to say that river does not mean what it does now. It says: At the time, river was the general word for any large body of water. Can anyone explain or elaborate on this? Is it just a Spanish language thing, or a general thing? I've asked at the talk page, and got no response yet. Carcharoth 16:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
This is a continuation of a question I had above, but phrased slightly differently:
What is the difference between the verbs "interested" and "enjoyed"? Specifically, why does the sentence "The box interested the boy" make sense, while the sentence "The box enjoyed the boy" doesn't?
In the class of "interested", other verbs such as "annoyed", "pleased", "amused", "angered" and so on all fit. In the class of "enjoyed", other verbs such as "hated", "liked", "adored", "loathed" and so on don't fit.
Is there a name for the difference between the two types of verbs? Obviously, it has to do with agency/animacy, and whether the effect is on the subject or the object(?), but is there a precise way to describe them? Thanks (again)! — Asbestos | Talk (RFC) 16:29, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Did Bangkok share the same Language with Japan in the 1970's? If no, What are the differences?
Thank you,
Matt
what does l'via l'viaquez mnean?
Hi - are there any English grammar experts out there. There are 13 tenses in the English language and I'm really stuck on a few of them - they seem very confusing. Would anyone know what tenses are in use here, thank you. Cheers, Michael.
1. I wish I had more time to finish this exercise.
2. When you have finished, you can go home.
3. I'm meeting some friends at the pub tonight.
4. We've got the next lesson in the language lab.
5. We're off to the cinema later.
Thanks, Michael-- Pishoghue2003 22:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Is it present-day, present day or modern day?
I think present day means now, while modern day means now or recently. For example, you would say "there have been X shuttle flights up to the present day" while "modern day aircraft" might include anything built since World War 2. StuRat 01:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello,
i'm a french native speaker and fixed an article, but my english is not 100 pure and correct. I'd like someone to review the article and make it in better english. Where do i ask for that kind of help?
Thanks!
(This may not be a Language question but I'll try here first). There are English surnames such as Brain(e), Head, Tongue, Cheek, H[e]art, Leg(ge), Tooth, Bottom, Foot, Bone, Kneebone, Finger, Hand, Hair, Kidney, Spine, Neck, Sole, Shin(n), Back ..... (keep adding others if you know of them). How did people ever get named after body parts? JackofOz 06:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Am looking for a word that means,a time or a situation when one nolonger feels the fire of love of romance or rather in love that ever existed in the initial stages of affair or marriage. this is ussually caused by anumber of situations that rises after people stay together like parenting, education and finances.
I would like to know the meaning of the words bromwed and bromwel
What is a phrase like this called? " A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"
(1) You can/may vote for whomever you want irks me, but for reasons I can't fully explain. I suppose the conclusion to the phrase is to vote for, but I think with that terminus unstated the sentence is incomplete. My solution would be to say You may vote for whoever it is for whom you want to vote, but that's a little unwieldy; similarly, You may vote for for whomever you want is (or at least sounds to be) manifestly wrong. Is the original grammatically and syntactically correct (or, if not, so much clearer than any technically correct phrasing as to be superior to the latter)?
(2) Often, especially in the context of sports, one uses the construction X joins Y as the only two individuals to have Z (e.g., Kobe Bryant joins Wilt Chamberlain as the only players in NBA history to have scored at least 80 points in a single game). As (1), this phrasing vexes, but once more for inexplicable reasons. I guess I'd say Kobe Bryant becomes, after/alongside Wilt Chamberlain, one of just two players in NBA history to have scored at least 80 points in a single game, but that's a bit wordy and perhaps periphrastic. Is the original alright—if a bit unsettling—or is there some superior alternative I've overlooked? Thanks in advance. 68.254.189.141 16:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Is it a coincidence that TLC not only stands for "tender loving care" but also "tastes like chicken" and "thin layer chromatography"? What is the connection?-- 64.12.116.134 17:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Are the atomic elements considered proper names and thus need capitalized? An example might be: "The substance was found to contain Tungsten."
What is the message intended when using the French term while comunicating in English.
Yours,Fernando.
I would like to know how to translate from english to portuguese ?
Third Person
grammer
Does one have a question for one to answer, or does one just need to know the proper way to spell "grammar" ? StuRat 19:51, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello,
English is in practice my second language, I grab every chance I get to improve it. But recently I discovered that I am not quite sure when it comes to this :
let us take a verb ending in -ise.
Like 'organise'.
What it is now :
I organise or I organize? I organised or I organised? An organisation or an organization?
Usually I go to the internet, it quickly gives me a sentence in which it is used, buth both (even wikipedia) cases occur! It seems that the overwhelming access (and possible manipulation) to/of language doesn't eliminate errors, on the contrary it feeds them. So please enlighten me.
Thanks.
Evilbu 20:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
And that also applies to the verbs I gave? Evilbu 20:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Well I basically want it to be correct in some language. So then I can use all things I wrote down?? Evilbu 20:34, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Right, about the use on Wikipedia, the rule is to be consistent. So the first person to write an article basically decides the style. Any following editors will have to stick to that. Although I've come across the argument that an English subject needs to be in English and vice versa. That makes some sense, but I don't think it's a rule. Articles on Dutch subjects are also mostly in English English. DirkvdM 06:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Standards of English and whether words are British or American is determined by usage and not by origin. Kenneth Clark's landmark TV series was called Civilisation. Sid Meier's landmark game was called Civilization. Jooler 07:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I searched the web but couldn't find the appropriate script in Aramaic when Emily says: "I am the one who dwelt within Cain, I am the one who dwelt within Nero, I once dwelt within Judas and I was with legion. I am Belial". Also I understood almost nothing from hearing. Could someone provide any info (namely concerning letters and/or transliteration)? Thanks. -- Brand спойт 20:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I've checked but can't seem to find what I'm looking for. What is the following form of the past tense known as: "He has come into the room." (cf. He came into the room) "She has shot him." (cf. She shot him). "We've all fallen down" (cf. We all fell down). This form is becoming increasingly used in conversation (not so much in writing) in Australia when discussing a long-past action. It was traditionally used to announce something that has only just happened. For example, when people tell jokes that contain a narrative, rather than say "He did X, and she replied Y ...", it's "He's done X, and she's replied Y ...". Or when they're discussing some historical event, it's like "Oswald's gone up to the 10th floor of the building, he's opened the window, he's stuck the gun out and he's shot JFK". Fine if it happened yesterday, but it was 42 years ago and it sounds weird to say it that way at such a chronological remove. Is this purely an Australianism, or is it more widespread? Is it simply a reflection of poor education; is it to make an old story sound more immediate; or are we observing a change going on in the way that the past tense is used? JackofOz 00:36, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
What is the best way to format this sentence?
Kemal was granted the honorific name Ataturk (meaning “Father of Turks”) by the National Assembly.
That's formatted perfectly- the italics are used correctly. -- Evan Carlstrom 06:37, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Does the name JORDAN as in Jordan river originated from the hebrew word: JORED (meaning to go down) do to the fact that the river falls or goes down? Emanuel
I found the word "glottocentrism" in an article on Wikipedia. It doesn't seem to be a real word, but I know there is one which has the same meaning. What is a word meaning "considering one language to be "correct"", or "focusing one one language". The context was :"As for most South Pacific languages, classical descriptions are generally based on the system used for Indo-European languages, especially concerning grammatical classes. Today linguists try to avoid it, considering it a form of glottocentrism." So, what word should have been used? Mo-Al 18:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
glottocentrism has only 56 hits if you exclude wikipedia, but glottocentric has another 95. the meaning I predicted above is found:
while I am not sure the usage analogous to "ethnocentrism" found on wikipedia is valid. linguacentric appears to keep being spontaneously and informally re-coined, but glottocentric is the more correct term (and clearly appears in more 'learned' contexts in the google results). langmaker.com has linguacentrism listed as a neologism with the meaning required above. dab (ᛏ) 20:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
please tell me how to write "i believe" in italian letters
Municipio translates to municipality in English but does not provide the nuance of Mexican use, which uses the name of the main city also as the name of the municipio in more than 90% of the almost 2500 Mexican municipios. A municipio is not exactly a city/county combination but the use of the description city/county helps an English reader understand the municipio term, especially when describing the city itself, and then its surrounding villages and areas.
I´m having a pissing match with another contributor and seek some help in clarifying the term for Wikipedia use.
Hello,
I was interested in the origin/meaning of the phrase "short, sharp, shocked". Your site refers me to the album of the same name by Michelle Shocked(which I own), but on a MUCH older release(Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon"), you can clearly hear a gentleman say"I was short, sharp, shocked". I have even asked 2 different musicians from the UK if they could tell me it's meaning. Both told me they hadn't a clue.
Thank you, [e-mail removed]
What is the origin of the saying "bat out of hell?"
I was playing Call of Duty 2 (again) and exploring when I went in a German bunker abd came across several German phrases. I was wondering what they meant.
Thanks. schyler 23:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
The game is awesome on XBOX Live. The campaign mode is kind of long however. Anyway, they were all in a bunker, so the light was really poor, and to top it off, one of my "comrades" threw a smoke grenade, so it was kind of hard to read. The first one was written on the ceiling above a bunk bed, and for some reason, I really think it's a bible verse. The second was REALLY hard to read. I'm surprised I got that much from it. An the third, I felt kind of stupid putting it here, knowing it was like beat/destroy/defeat England or something like that, but when I put it in a machine traslation I use, I got "against narrow country," so I figured I put it up, butt it turns out it is what I thaught it was. Also, Offnen (in the second one) may have been spelt offten, often, or ofnen and there was also an "!" at the end of that one. Thanks for your help so far. schyler 13:54, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
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