July 3[edit]

Hi hi. I'm working a bit on Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Party_of_Revolutionary_Communism, a question here that I'm unsure of is the use of plural or singular on 'vote'. If there is a group of people, with each individual possessing one vote, is it correct to say 'ten delegates with decisive vote' or 'ten delegates with decisive votes'? I feel that in the latter case its implied that delegates could cast more than one vote each. -- Soman (talk) 13:18, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Ten delegates with decisive vote" is not standard English, at least for me. Votes are typically one per person per election; where that's not the case (such as when you can select multiple choices for things like city council or whatever), the details are usually described specifically. However, the full situation you're working on is already unusual; you're using "decisive" to (I think) only refer to those votes that were actually counted towards the result, in contrast with what you're calling "consultative votes". I don't know the details of what you're describing, but it sure seems odd: the whole point of voting is for it to count towards the result. It might be better to re-word the section to explicitly describe the situation. In standard English, all votes count towards the decision, so the term "decisive vote" means a special case where the results are tied and it's up to a small number of people (usually one) to cast the "decisive" vote that makes the decision. Matt Deres (talk) 14:21, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the context, some delegates only have an "advisory vote"; the regular votes of other delegates are called "decisive votes". I don't know how advisory votes are counted, if at all; in any case, the term "decisive vote" usually has a different meaning. ("Senator John McCain of Arizona, who just this week returned to the Senate after receiving a diagnosis of brain cancer, cast the decisive vote to defeat the proposal, joining two other Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in opposing it."^[1])  --Lambiam 19:33, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lenin allowed voting??? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:59, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have the impression that it took some time for Lenin to fully consolidate his power. There weren't really any meaningful popular votes, but intra-Party votes might have been important for a while. It's not my field; maybe someone who knows more about it could weigh in. --Trovatore (talk) 21:10, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What does Lenin have to do with the issue?  --Lambiam 22:42, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The issues relate to the Party of Revolutionary Communism of 1918–20, which subsequently merged into Lenin's Bolshevik Party, the leading but far from only Party participating in governing Russia (soon to become the Soviet Union) at that time. Intra-party factions and splits, and inter-party disputes and merges were rife, and it was all done by committees, so votes in various contexts could be very important. Lenin was not an all-powerful dictator from the outset. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 151.227.226.178 (talk) 02:05, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd stress here that the words for 'vote'/'voice' are the same in many languages. And the terms 'decisive vote' and 'consultative vote' where used in the English-language materials of the Communist International. The statues of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed candidate members to participate in party meetings with consultative vote, not decisive vote ([2]). And so forth. But my question was, should it be 'ten delegates with decisive vote' (vote in singular) or 'ten delegates with decisive votes' (votes in plural)? --Soman (talk) 12:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Soman: You're forgetting the articles; so is your question "should it be 'ten delegates with a decisive vote' (vote in singular) or 'ten delegates with decisive votes' (votes in plural)"? As a British English speaker, I'd go for the first (singular) version if you're treating the ten voters as a group (for example, they belong to a political grouping). If you're simply talking about ten unconnected people who each happen to have a decisive vote, then probably the second, although it looks a bit strange as I can't envisage how that would happen. Bazza 7 (talk) 12:58, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note that "decisive vote" does not mean what it usually means. The meaning in this context is more like "first-class". Some delegates have first-class votes; these carry more weight than the votes of other delegates. So would you say, 'ten delegates with a first-class vote' or 'ten delegates with first-class votes'? I think the latter, also if these delegates belong to the same political faction.  --Lambiam 14:53, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 5[edit]

Assaí is a Brazilian municipality whose name is derived from the Japanese word 朝日 Asahi. Are there other instances of place names (villages, towns, cities, provinces etc..., not street names or restaurants) outside of Japan (modern and historical, thus excluding, for example, Karafuto] with a Japanese etymology or with an outright Japanese name? I'm particularly curious about South America, with its large Japanese diaspora. Thanks! 82.48.30.149 (talk) 14:13, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's Okinawa Uno, Bolivia. Nardog (talk) 12:50, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are several places (either tiny communities or ghost towns) in the U.S. and Canada named Tokio or Togo, which the study Names on the Land attributes to the pro-Japanese sentiment in some circles during the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. There is also Japan, Missouri in the Missouri Ozarks, which was named after the local Roman Catholic church, the Church of the Holy Martyrs of Japan. --Orange Mike | Talk 12:34, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 6[edit]

1. Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) that has a phonemic contrast between close-mid and open-mid vowels?
2. Is there any dialect that pronounces the P in word psychology? Several other languages pronounce it.
3. Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) that has /z/ or /v/ phoneme?
4. Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) that has a /b/-/v/ distinction?
5. Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) where j / soft g is a coronal sound, rather than velar?
6. Is pronouncing the T in words tsunami and tsar more common that pronouncing P in psychology?
7. Why letter S is silent in viscount? Silent letters don't typically appear at the ends of non-initial syllables.
8. Are there any words in English with coda /sl/?
9. Are there any words in English that have a consonant cluster containing an affricate?
10. Are there any words in English that have affricates or /h/ in complex onsets?

--40bus (talk) 19:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for 8, "hassle" etc, if you're willing to accept syllabic L. AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for 6, many people pronounce "tsar" as if spelled "zar". I don't think there's much initial /ts/ except in Tsetse fly. AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for 7, presumably borrowed from French after the amount of silent consonants in French had increased... AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I figured it might have been a later "etymological spelling", such as isle or debt. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:05, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely from Old French.[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:11, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for 9, if medial clusters are allowed, there's "judgement". AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are accents where 'tree' is pronounced "chree" and (I think) 'dream' is "jream". And of course many people still pronounce 'which' as "hwich". Also 'hue'. — kwami (talk) 08:56, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The /b/–/v/ contrast in Spanish is reported in the US, northern Mexico, and Puerto Rico (Exford 2018). Nardog (talk) 09:39, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any Spanish dialect (other than Judaeo-Spanish) that has a phonemic contrast between close-mid and open-mid vowels?[edit]

Spanish phonology#Realization_of_/s/:

In Eastern Andalusian and Murcian Spanish, word-final /s/, /θ/ and /x/ regularly weaken, and the preceding vowel is lowered and lengthened:[157]

/is/ > [ɪː] e.g. mis [mɪː] ('my' pl)

/es/ > [ɛː] e.g. mes [mɛː] ('month')

/as/ > [æː] e.g. más [mæː] ('plus')

/os/ > [ɔː] e.g. tos [tɔː] ('cough')

/us/ > [ʊː] e.g. tus [tʊː] ('your' pl)

A subsequent process of vowel harmony takes place so lejos ('far') is [ˈlɛxɔ], tenéis ('you [plural] have') is [tɛˈnɛj] and tréboles ('clovers') is [ˈtɾɛβɔlɛ] or [ˈtɾɛβolɛ].[158]

I guess that is phonetic rather than phonemic. --Error (talk) 00:59, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do numerals constitute a distinct part of speech in English? --40bus (talk) 21:04, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They're not usually considered to do so. AnonMoos (talk)

In general, cardinals would be nouns, and ordinals would be adjectives. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:06, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Finnish, it is a distinct part of speech. Even words like sata (100) and tuhat (1000) are definitely numerals, and not nouns. --40bus (talk) 06:16, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Grammarians may label some word as a distinct part of speech, but is this reflected in its actual use in the language? The word sata can be inflected just like a common noun such as utu, so it can function as a noun, just like an English numeral such as hundred, which can be qualified with an adjective ("the happy hundred") and has a plural ("hundreds of people agree with me"). What makes cardinal numerals distinct from common nouns, though, at least in some languages, is that they can be used as determiners of nouns ("the first hundred years"). You can substitute the noun "lot" for "hundred" used as a noun ("the happy lot"; "lots of people agree with me"). You cannot do this with "hundred" used as a determiner (*"the first lot years"). That is IMO enough reason to assign cardinal numbers their own part of speech, but an alternative is to assign several parts of speech. Wiktionary classifies Finnish sata as only a numeral but English hundred as both a numeral and a noun. The English word some is classified as a pronoun, a determiner, and an adverb.

Rather in general, grammarians do not agree among themselves on which parts of speech there are and which ones should be assigned to given terms. The common assignments are also a matter of what is conventional, rather than theoretically sound.  --Lambiam 08:57, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Parts of speech are to some extent subjective. There are different kinds of noun that might be considered different parts of speech, and to some extent it's just tradition that they're not. English numerals, if you want to call them nouns, behave differently than other nouns. In "two [dogs] bark", "two" is not your typical noun. It doesn't take the plural, yet counts as a plural for the verb. (That's different than "I wrote four twos", where it does take the plural and does behave as a typical noun.) It's attributive ("two dogs bark"), yet can occur without the main noun ("two bark"), which is also odd. There's lots of behaviour like that that would be odd for a noun, so you could say that it's not a noun. — kwami (talk) 08:52, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Back in 2017, Zompist had a post on the syntax of mathematical sentences (e.g. "two plus two equals four"). Double sharp (talk) 09:14, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

NB (I don't know if this is the reason for your question, 40bus), if a numeral is not a part of speech, then the second bullet at Numeral needs to be corrected. I'm not bold enough to do it myself since I don't know what exactly is a "numeral" or a "part of speech". AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 13:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 7[edit]

Were Welsh words with /ɬ/, /r̥/, and /n̥/ loaned into Old English (possibly also early Middle English) with /hl/, /hr/, and /hn/? What about loans in the other direction?

(Somewhat inspired by 40bus' question about h-clusters.) Double sharp (talk) 09:21, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if there were enough Celtic loans into Old English for us to know.

Welsh ll came in later as fl, at least in 'Floyd' and 'flummery'. — kwami (talk) 10:49, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have a List of English words of Welsh origin, which as — kwami says above, are remarkably few considering that the English and Welsh have lived together for more than a thousand years. Alansplodge (talk) 11:28, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Swedish words of Finnish origin are of a similar magnitude... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:20, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was afraid of that. :( But surely names of Welsh people and settlements must have been recorded by the English? Double sharp (talk) 11:44, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They were and are recorded and used, since Welsh is a living language, but they did and do not generally give rise to words in the vocabulary of English. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 151.227.226.178 (talk) 15:24, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes of course. I was thinking of the period when Old English still had those consonant clusters.

So, just thinking of a prominent Welsh person from the medieval period whose name would've contained /ɬ/: surely Llywelyn the Great must've been mentioned in some contemporary English texts? How was his name spelled in those texts? Double sharp (talk) 15:31, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

400 years later, Shakespeare included a character in Henry V called Fluellen, which WP describes as "an Anglicised version of Llywelyn". Turner Street (talk) 12:10, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's like kwami's examples of Floyd and flummery. By then /hl/ did not exist in English, so /fl/ was perceived as closest to /ɬ/. What I was wondering was whether /hl/ was ever used to borrow Welsh words when that consonant cluster existed in English – but as indicated by kwami's latest response in this thread, the question may not be answerable due to the small size of the Old English corpus. Double sharp (talk) 17:02, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alansplodge's example of Latin "Lhein" below is suggestive. This was very early Middle English, so perhaps the sound still occurred, or was remembered. If hw had become MdE wh by this time, we might expect hl to have become lh as well. So perhaps this is indirect evidence for what you're looking for?

Note that Llanddewi didn't get the same treatment. Perhaps /hl/ was only maintained in stressed syllables? I'm just speculating here. How important would English phonotactics or orthography be (if there even was an English orthography at the time for hl to have become lh -- unless that happened at the end of the OE era?) to a Welshman writing in Latin when the court language was Norman? It's likely someone has analyzed this somewhere. — kwami (talk) 19:09, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the spelling change from "hw" to "wh" reflected any phonetic change (not entirely clear to me), it would be from a cluster [xw] to a single sound [ʍ], not any reordering. Another motivation could have been just to assimilate the spelling to digraphs with "h" in second position (sh, ch, th etc). In Scotland, the spelling "quh" was occasionally used... AnonMoos (talk) 19:43, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I just meant as an orthographic change. — kwami (talk) 23:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, Rhyl gives some examples of how Middle English writers tried to represent Welsh /r̥/ around 1300: Hulle, Hul, Ryhull. But I'm not sure if Middle English had already lost /hr/ by then. Those examples are referenced to Owen and Morgan's Dictionary of the Place-names of Wales (2007), so that might be a good place to start researching this question. Now if only I hadti a copy. Double sharp (talk) 15:40, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gerald of Wales, writing in Latin in 1191 (for a French-speaking English audience) in Itinerarium Cambriae or Journey through Wales, for example has Llanddewi Brefi as "Landewi Brevi" and Llŷn as "Lhein". Not sure if this helps. Gerald was presumably able to speak Welsh, but English was not the language of geographers or historians at this time. Alansplodge (talk) 19:02, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think we're looking for something earlier. Presumably Old English would've maintained the distinctions that were available to it. The problem is attestation: the surviving Old English corpus is quite small (a single person can -- and does -- study the entire thing!), so it's possible that such names do not occur, or occur with such low frequency that we can't be sure if the surviving tokens are representative.

But Lhein is certainly suggestive. — kwami (talk) 21:21, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing to do with Welsh, but proto-Germanic "hringaz" was borrowed into Finnish as "rengas"... AnonMoos (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And continuing the Celtic theme of my previous question: what's the history of the factor-names for 18? I'm referring to Breton triwec'h "three sixes" and Welsh deunaw "two nines". Cornish etek seems to be regular additive 8 + 10 instead, and English Wiktionary tells me that Breton and Welsh both have (presumably rarer? they're not on the main Wiktionary page listing translations of wikt:eighteen) regular alternatives (even if we restrict ourselves to the traditional vigesimal system for Welsh). Double sharp (talk) 16:00, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The book "Lingo" by Gaston Dorren has a brief discussion of the irregularity of Breton number words, where 78 + 59 is three-six-and-three-twenty plus nine-and-half-hundred. He also says that Welsh (unlike Breton) has regular forms for calculating with, as opposed to the irregular forms for counting. Some modern languages of India also have a rather complicated system of sub-100 number words... AnonMoos (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What are some factors that have traditionally played a part in determining whether places in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam use native toponyms or Chinese-derived toponyms? Primal Groudon (talk) 18:25, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seoul traditionally had no Chinese characters corresponding to its name, unlike many other Korean placenames of any importance... AnonMoos (talk) 18:39, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although the names of Japanese places like Fukuoka, Kumamoto and Nagasaki are written in Japanese with kanji (福岡; 熊本; 長崎), the names themselves are generally Japanese. The characters for Nagasaki are read in Chinese like Chángqí (Hanyu Pinyin romanization).  --Lambiam 09:58, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In Hokkaido, we find place-names like Sapporo 札幌 or Furano 富良野 which are originally Ainu, but were adapted phonetically into Japanese and then given kanji with the appropriate sound. Double sharp (talk) 10:05, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My focus for this question is on the etymology of the toponyms, not the script used to write them. Primal Groudon (talk) 19:15, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very interesting question! I was able to find online a text called “Standardisation of place names in countries influenced by the chinese writing system” by Hiroshi Tanabe. It goes into detail about it. I’m quoting it here: (Redacted) 82.48.30.149 (talk) 13:45, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Kanji" is the Japanese name for Chinese characters, in China it's "hanzi", in Korea "hanja" and in Vietnamese "chữ Hán". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It probably depends on the fact that the author is Japanese (it was a quote from him). Just a question: why was the quote redacted? --195.62.160.60 (talk) 15:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The original PDF of Tanabe and Watanabe's document is here. (It's from the institution of one of the authors, so it should be fine.) Double sharp (talk) 15:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It was perceived as a copyright violation, without giving credit to the original authors of the paper, I believe. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

wp:deny
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
(edit conflict) Unlike Wikipedia content, where attribution is sufficient, copyright may prevent reproduction unless permission is obtained. 92.29.246.121 (talk) 16:46, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. When I said "it should be fine", I meant "it should be fine to link". Certainly not to quote at as much length as it had been quoted before redaction. Double sharp (talk) 06:41, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 8[edit]

Journalist Nesta Roberts wrote in 1971 about the later so-called 27 Club members: "In what proportion drink, drugs, and desperation respectively contributed to those deaths is a matter for individual conjecture." I'm not sure what exactly she means with "individual conjecture": Is it "We can assume the proportion was different for each of those individuals", or "Everybody may make his own assumptions on this topic."? --KnightMove (talk) 15:58, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely the second option ("Everybody can do their own guessing")... AnonMoos (talk) 16:14, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that that is what she did write, but is it what she actually meant to write? Why should anyone (including myself) care about what I think caused Jimi Hendrix's death? It seems to make more sense to state that each case must be assessed individually, and I suspect that she just formulated this poorly. Of course there's no way to know for certain. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's the same thing as leaving it up to the reader, which was already a cliché centuries ago. Jane Austen ended Northanger Abbey with the following rather sarcastic final sentence: "I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward filial disobedience." AnonMoos (talk) 17:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In mathematics, and possibly elsewhere, the phrase is "...left as an exercise for the reader". --Trovatore (talk) 20:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC) [reply]

I've read Northanger Abbey (twice) and I know a bit of mathematics and I'm still not convinced, although, it should be noted, I did agree about the literal meaning. The context of the sentence might help. --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:42, 8 July 2024 (UTC) [reply]

@Wrongfilter: "„Jim Morrison, vocalist of The Doors, who had lived in Paris since the beginning of this year, died here on July 3 in what has become almost the classic fashion of the folk hero of pop culture. Like Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix: and at the same age, 27, he was found dead. In what proportion drink, drugs, and desperation respectively contributed to those deaths is a matter for individual conjecture.“ --KnightMove (talk) 10:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here purely a matter for individual conjecture is given as a definition for the term anybody's guess. In this definition, individual corresponds with anybody's – it refers to those doing the guessing. The subtext is that such guessing is baseless, also expressed in the saying your guess is as good as mine – I can't know, and neither can you. Paraphrasing, she is saying that speculation how much each factor contributed to these deaths is meaningless; we don't know and we can't know.

If one shouldn't engage in speculation about specific cases, guessing group statistics for the 27 Club as a whole is even more pointless, so for that reason it is also unlikely that that is what she meant. As I understand the sentence she takes it for granted, though, that each death should be considered on a case-by-case basis; in some inebriety may have played a major role in the events leading to a person's death, while in other cases it perhaps did not. We just don't know more than what is known.  --Lambiam 22:18, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 13[edit]

The German crime television series de:Der Alte is named The Old Fox in English, fr:Le Renard (série télévisée) in French, fi:Vanha kettu in Finnish, and sv:Den gamle deckarräven in Swedish.

All four of the translated names I have mentioned mean "the fox" or "the old fox". The original German name does not. It simply means "the old one".

Why is this? Is "fox" somehow implied from "old"? How is it possible that four unrelated languages (Finnish is not even Indo-European) have managed to do this independently? Or is there something I am missing here? JIP | Talk 19:56, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not familiar with the series, but foxes are, in English (and I believe in Persian), proverbially crafty characters. An old one would be even more so. Reynard of course crosses cultures. Is the "Old One" of the series a cunning, crafty, type? DuncanHill (talk) 20:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This RefDesk thread concerning the differences between being a person described as "old" in German and English might be relevant too. Alansplodge (talk) 22:11, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Quoting our article The Old Fox: 'By understanding the psychological make-up of his suspect, the "Old Fox" craftily leads the criminal into his own trap, to the great surprise of his often perplexed staff.'  --Lambiam 09:48, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It does indeed seem that "Der Alte" in the series is a cunning, crafty type. The main Old Fox is an older Chief Inspector, physically slow, but mentally sharp with a deep understanding of human nature. Apparently Der Alte carries certain connotations in German as a Chief or Boss, implying that With Age Comes Wisdom and so forth. The TV series is a long-running institution in Germany, and the basic concept is indeed promising. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a native German speaker - Austro-Bavarian - who has never seen an installment of this TV series: "Der Alte" is generally a term of respect and even endearment to describe a person of seniority and superior experience. In my understanding, the above mentioned characteristics of foxy cunning is not part of the semantics. However, I repeat to never have seen any of the productions. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:09, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 15[edit]

We use [brackets] to enclose parenthetical phrases that are inside another parenthetical phrase. That is, brackets are for a double parenthetical phrase. But what do we use when there are three levels of parenthetical phrases?? What do we use?? Georgia guy (talk) 11:54, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're talking in English, right? What I've seen, on the rare occasions where it was necessary, was curved brackets {}: (enclosing [this {enclosing this} thusly]). --Orange Mike | Talk 12:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From DPDk, with two levels it is (algunos estudiosos consideran su obra Fortunata y Jacinta [1886-87] la mejor novela española del siglo xix) but in mathematics and chemistry it is reversed [(4 + 2) × (5 + 3)] − (6 − 2). I remember from math class {2 × [3 × (4 + 5)] + 6} . Bracket (mathematics) says:

Square brackets are also often used in place of a second set of parentheses when they are nested—so as to provide a visual distinction.

--Error (talk) 22:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bracket (mathematics) Glossary of mathematics#Brackets:

{□}

1. Sometimes used as a synonym of (□) and [□] for avoiding nested parentheses.

--Error (talk) 22:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Georgia_guy -- I think it's as common or possibly even more common (based on what I've seen) to use parentheses within parentheses: (...(...)...). This convention is reasonably clear (though it can be a little bit visually jarring if multiple ")" marks are side-by-side at the end). AnonMoos (talk) 22:20, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bracket says:

Parentheses may be nested (generally with one set (such as this) inside another set). This is not commonly used in formal writing (though sometimes other brackets [especially square brackets] will be used for one or more inner set of parentheses [in other words, secondary {or even tertiary} phrases can be found within the main parenthetical sentence]).

--Error (talk) 22:44, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why can't every language romanize Russian using scientific transliteration? It would eliminate irritating conventions using ⟨y⟩ for iotated vowels and ⟨sh⟩ for Ш etc. and reflect language's Slavicness better. --40bus (talk) 19:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why can't the English teach their children how to transliterate Russian? They can, but they don't feel like it. --Amble (talk) 20:33, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Languages do not romanize. Did you mean, why can't publications in every language use scientific transliteration for Russian terms (presumably mainly proper nouns)? Many languages do not use a Latin alphabet, and in several of those that do some of the transliterations use letters not in their alphabet. Even if it solves a problem, it addresses only a minute part of the general problem; most non-Latin scripts do not have a "scientific" transliteration, and many romanization schemes rely on the English pronunciation of letters.  --Lambiam 21:30, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40-bus -- We discussed this exact same topic not too long ago. My basic answer is the same as before: Most English-language speakers have been rather resistant to the use of diacritics (except as optional marks of sophistication for some semi-unassimilated loanwords borrowed from a few foreign languages which use the Latin alphabet, especially French). In the case of Finnish, Finnish speakers are accustomed to diacritics, due to the use of ä and ö in the orthography of their language, and there's no native Finnish way of spelling the "sh" and "zh" sounds, so there was no problem with introducing š and ž into Finnish practices for transcribing foreign words. However, none of that applies to English. The average native English-speaker reading an article about Eastern Europe, if he cares at all about how words transcribed from Cyrillic are pronounced, wants a rough practical approximate guide based on customary English spellings, and does not want to worry about strange little marks flying around various letters. (And that's assuming that his news source would even include the diacritics -- in the days of Wade-Giles, its diacritics and apostrophes were almost always omitted in mass-market English-language newspapers, as has also been explained before.) AnonMoos (talk) 22:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But West Slavic names usually appear with diacritics in English texts. If Russian used Latin alphabet, then there were no irritations and the alphabet would be similar to Czech alphabet. Thus I hope that Russian will eventually switch to Latin alphabet in next 30 years. --40bus (talk) 06:25, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You may well hope, but there is no chance that Russian changes alphabets. Cyrillic is perfectly adapted to the language, has been in use for centuries, and is known by the entire Russian population. Why should there be a switch, except to please a few eccentrics in foreign countries who don't even speak the language? Xuxl (talk) 09:34, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And most English speakers generally ignore the diacritics on West Slavic names. They get printed, but the average reader doesn't give a shit about them. My question is "why can't 40bus accept the fact that different languages are different?" Seriously, you keep asking questions phrased in such a way as to suggest that you know best and that any language that dares to deviate from your preferred methods is in some way deficient or wrong. STOP DOING THAT. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:35, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

He won't stop until he's forced to stop. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:03, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No one can force so well-augured a user to stop—according to Myles na gCopaleen, "Fortuna favet 40 bus". Deor (talk) 16:36, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting that you refer to "West Slavic" and then only mention the Czech alphabet. Do you think Polish orthography, which also uses digraphs, insufficiently reflects the language's Slavicness?

(In fact Polish does transliterate Russian using the Polish conventions, e.g. pl:Anton Czechow.) Double sharp (talk) 18:11, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If Russia does after all decide to switch to the Latin alphabet, it may actually go for the English style, with ⟨sh⟩, ⟨y⟩, etc. That style is more internationally recognisable (which languages that chose diacritics weren't too concerned about when they did so), would make Russian orthography distinct from those of related languages, and already serves as the mainstream standard for romanizing the language. On the other hand, scientific transliterations, as the attribute scientific suggests, seek linguistic precision but not necessarily user-friendliness. --Theurgist (talk) 22:13, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

July 17[edit]

An American man and an American woman are "two Americans". This is gender-neutral and unambiguous. An Englishman and an Englishwoman are "two English". However, this is not that well understandable as it is not your first connotation when you hear "two English". What is talked about here? A translation from Spanish "to English"? Is the girlfriend of a Scottish boy "too English" for his grandmother? Is there a better, unmistakable way to address two mixed-gender people from England? --KnightMove (talk) 10:47, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Two English people? HiLo48 (talk) 11:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think HiLo48 has the best answer. "Two Englanders" is understandable but will leave you sounding like a comedic stereotype. "Two Britons" is correct but less precise. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 13:00, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When not in England, the term "Brits" (albeit in this particular case, as you say, imprecise) is something I've heard commonly used and used myself. Mikenorton (talk) 16:46, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• I am not aware of a generic & specific term for two people of mixed gender. The word "couple" may be useful, but it does not define two random people. Two Americans, two Britons, two Spaniards (or whatever) can be any combination of genders / sexes. And two Viennese könnten ja ein Paar Würschtel sein. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 13:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Occasionally, people use just "two English" as a noun phrase.^[4][5][6]  --Lambiam 14:55, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that would normally be considered non-standard, though. There are some (most?) demonyms which are both adjective and noun (e.g. American/an American, German/a German), some which have different words for each (e.g. Spanish/a Spaniard, Danish/a Dane) and some which are (generally) only used as adjectives (e.g. French, Irish, Chinese). Generally those in the third category need "person" added to make a noun phrase (or "-man"/"-woman" in some cases), and that's where I'd put "English". There seems to be a slight shift towards treating the third category the same as the first category and using the adjective as a noun (e.g. I've seen "a Chinese" instead of "a Chinese person"), which is presumably why there are a few instances of "two English" being used, but it still sounds odd to my (British English) ear. (Admittedly, it does sound a little less odd in the plural. "I saw two English walking down the street" would be odd, but "I saw an English walking down the street" would be downright bizarre.) Proteus (Talk) 15:27, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Possibly the closest we can come in standard-speak is "The English are a curious race", or "You English are despicable". Not even "some English" works for me.-- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 15:46, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]