Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 March 14

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March 14

Language without questions

Many people post things on the reference desks which are not framed as questions, but merely as declarations. Naturally, I assumed these people were idiots, but in the spirit of WP:AGF assumed they were not native speakers of English, and their natural language did not have interrogative sentences. So, my question is: There is a language without questions. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 04:37, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

No, every language has a way of marking questions. The written form of the language, however, may not have any way of marking it. It's also possible for questions to be marked only be means of things like intonation (English does this with the question forms of declarative sentences, like "you gave it to her already?"), although even for languages that do that, I'm almost positive there will always be interrogative pronouns (like "who?" "what?", etc.) as well. --Miskwito 04:45, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Some questions in the Gaelic languages take the same form as the affirmative (though pitch inflection tips you off that it's a question), and in Welsh the only difference between many questions and their responses is a single letter. ("Ydyn ni'n mynd nawr? Ydyn. Rydyn ni'n mind nawr." = "Are we going now? Yes, we are going now.") The Jade Knight 06:05, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Differing pitch seems to be common for denoting questions worldwide. For Chinese, questions are marked with a particular high-pitch "question word" at the end. In some languages, questions are apparently marked with a low-pitch, how odd it appears to me... It is hard to imagine a working language without interrogative sentences, actually. Seems to be a basis for human communication and interaction. I have a hard time figuring how crucial collective tasks such as animal-hunting, fishing and planning journeys for richer places to stay, could be performed in a reasonably efficient manner without asking questions and receiving answers in your tribe... 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 12:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Idiots they are then! − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 19:30, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Or maybe they are just too lazy to use ?s :] HS7 19:36, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

This question reminds me of the scene in My Cousin Vinny where one of the yout's is being interrogated and the sheriff says something like "So is that when you shot the clerk?" Having no idea until this moment that there had been a shooting, he replies: "I shot the clerk?" And later this four-word sentence is read back in court -- as a confession, by just repeating the four words without inflection. --Anonymous, March 14, 2007, 22:41 (UTC)?

Note that you can't tell a real question from a rhetorical question in written English. Does "Do you think I'm insane ?" mean I'm asking you for a serious evaluation of my mental condition or that I am berating you for treating me as if I were insane ? StuRat 02:20, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Related to that, I wonder if there's a language without imperative (command) statements. – b_jonas 20:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

What is this language?

This is of Jerome's "De Viris Illustribus" (On Famous Men). What language? --Doug ^talk 13:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Russian. Marco polo 14:02, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Russian. Translated by Ruslan Khazarzar who has a massive website[1] of translated old texts. - X201 14:09, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If you're not aware of it, already, you could also check out the article on the Cyrillic alphabet, (itself heavily based on the Greek alphabet). 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 14:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

... just like ours :) Sarazyn • TALK • DE 15:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but not as much, I'd say. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 17:55, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Interesting, so German is also based on Greek: did not know that. --Doug ^talk 15:39, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

To clarify, the German alphabet (a variant of our Roman alphabet) is based on the Greek alphabet. The German language is not derived from the Greek language, although some (mostly learned or scientific) words are borrowed from Greek. Marco polo 16:04, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Whereas Greek loan words in German are rare. For a view of relationships between German and Greek see Indo-European languages. Sarazyn • TALK • DE 14:50, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

De Viris Illustribus

Does anyone know of other text translations of "De Viris Illustribus" (On Illustribus Men) other than Latin, Greek, English, and Russian? --Doug ^talk 15:30, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

As a Church father, I am sure that he has been translated into every major European language and probably into a handful of Asian languages as well. Marco polo 16:02, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that is pretty much what I thought. Perhaps you can help me on another related question. I am working on the article Jerome's De Viris Illustribus and another editor says that while translations into English, Latin, and ancient Greet are appropriate links under the section "Texts in various languages" -> that the Russian translation is not appropriate. What do you think? Are other languages (i.e.German, French, Italian) proper to put here, or only just those three mentioned? --Doug ^talk 18:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

My opinion is that it is not particularly helpful to English readers to have translated texts in languages other than English. The original text is helpful in case the reader knows the original language and does not want recourse to a translation. Therefore, I would question the appropriateness of the Greek text as well, since Jerome wrote in Latin. Instead of "Texts in various languages", I would prefer a heading such as "Links to the text" or "Original text and translations". If you can find more than one English translation, that would be helpful, because often one is strong in ways that another is not. Marco polo 19:01, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll stay out of this except to say that I'm the "other editor," and I figured the Greek version was of some interest because it seems to date to Jerome's lifetime. The article De Viris Illustribus (Jerome) could certainly use the eyes of many other editors; it's been taking way too much of my Wikipedia time to try to be the only editor actively involved in the article, besides its author Doug. Wareh 14:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Sanskrit

Which modern languages are closest to sanskrit? While am at it, can I ask the same about latin? Italian would seem the obvious answer but often Spanish seems closer, e.g. dia>giorno —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.85.161.130 (talk) 19:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC).

The Indo-Aryan, or Indic, languages are all roughly similarly related to Sanskrit. You are right that Spanish is more conservative than Italian in some ways, but probably the most conservative Romance language is Sardinian. Marco polo 20:20, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Is it just me, or does French seem a lot less loyal than either Italian or Spanish? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.85.161.213 (talk) 20:45, 14 March 2007 (UTC).

It isn't a question of "loyalty". The main difference between French and the other Romance languages is that French has undergone more phonological change, which in turn has led to the complete loss of many syllables. The loss of audible inflectional verb endings has caused French to become more analytic than Spanish or Italian. Unlike those two languages, for example, the use of subject pronouns is obligatory in French. Marco polo 21:14, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If Spanish is so close to Latin, then Portuguese is close to Latin as well, since they are so close to one another. I know Portuguese and it looks really far from Latin to me, which makes this competition about which language is the closest to Latin more like a competition of which language is less far away from Latin. A.Z. 10:50, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Let me correct my earlier statement about Indic languages. While they are all descended from Sanskrit or a close relative of Sanskrit, possibly the most conservative of the Indic languages, both in terms of phonology and vocabulary, is Marathi. The vocabulary of the most widely spoken Indic language, Hindi, was heavily influenced by Persian. The same is true for other North Indian languages, other than Bengali and Assamese. Bengali and Assamese, however, are less conservative phonologically than Marathi. Marco polo 21:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I heard many times Romanian was the closest to Latin. A.Z. 18:58, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Wasn't that just for particular grammatical traits? 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 20:36, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I don´t know. I just heard it. So what people meant by that was that Romanian is the closest language to Latin when it comes to particular grammatical traits? A.Z. 05:30, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what people meant. (They might just possibly perceive it incorrectly.) I've read some criticism of that statement, though. For instance, Romanian has replaced a big deal of Latinate vocabulary with Slavic (but I don't know the exact details). 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 10:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I've heard the Romanian is the closest language to Latin too. Aparently, although there are come slavic and hungarian influences, the language was largly isolated from other languages. Italian and Romanain are very close to each other- if you know romanian, then you could understand most of italian.

Adding a Language Summary Box?

Greetings: I am working on adding a page for the language Ventureño. I want to add a language summary box, such as the one on the right hand side of the page on the English Language. This seems to be some kind of standard format, though, so I do not know where I would get this template/spreadsheet nor do I know how I would put it on the page for the language I am talking about.

Alaquwel 23:17, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Edit one article with an infobox, copy/paste the source for the infobox and adjust the statistics to your language. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 23:20, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you're talking about Template:Infobox Language. The instructions can be found here. — Gareth Hughes 23:20, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've added the infobox to Ventureño. — Gareth Hughes 23:30, 14 March 2007 (UTC)