Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 June 5

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June 5

Grammar, spelling, syntax etc.

Hello,

I am not good in English. I am working on the article "Danish Order of Freemasons" and I need some help. Will some native Americans or Englishmen please help me with the following two pieces of text?:

1) This piece of text is meant to be a short description under this picture: "Above the bronze door of/at/by the main entrance of (the) lodge building in Copenhagen, Denmark."

2) This piece of text is meant to be a paragraph in the article: "The headquarters of the Danish Order of Freemasons (the Grand Lodge of Denmark) is located on the street (of) "Blegdamsvej" in the district "Østerbro" of Copenhagen, Denmark. The headquarters is designed by Danish architect and freemason Holger Rasmussen and built between 1 May 1923 and 12 October 1927. The cornerstone was laid on 3 June 1924 by Danish king Christian X, who was a freemason. The building is on 13,515 square metres and has approximately 335 rooms. It is 19.5 metres tall and has six main floors of which two is below/under ground. The columns at/by the main entrance are 16 metres tall and weigh 72 tons each."

If you have any questions about the two pieces of text – feel free to ask me. Thank you very much for helping me. --Treeabove (talk) 06:42, 5 June 2012 (UTC).

Here you go:

1) [Inscription] above the bronze doors of the main entrance to the Copenhagen lodge building. (Note doors plural because there are two swinging panels or doorway singular, and Denmark can be omitted after Copenhagen.)

2) The headquarters of the Danish Order of Freemasons, the Grand Lodge of Denmark, is located on Blegdamsvej street in Copenhagen's Østerbro district. The headquarters were designed by Danish architect and freemason Holger Rasmussen and were built between 1 May, 1923 and 12 October, 1927. The cornerstone was laid on 3 June, 1924 by King Christian X, who was himself a freemason. The building has 13,515 square metres of floor space and approximately 335 rooms. It is 19.5 metres tall and has six main floors, two of which are below ground. The columns by the main entrance are 16 metres tall and weigh 72 tons each.

FYI either at or by and either under or below at the end of the second bit of text would be fine. What you wrote is perfectly clear, even if your word choice and order has a foreign 'accent'. In the future you can trust your writing to be understood. "The headquarters is designed" was your worst construction. Also, there is no need to repeat Danish and Denmark so long as it is mentioned at the top of the article. μηδείς (talk) 07:43, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I'd drop 'street' after 'Blegdamsvej', since as I think 'street' recapitulates part of the meaning of the street's name. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:36, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we can expect most monolingual readers to guess -vej means -way. I wouldn't drop it unless you add the street number (like "is located at 123 Blegdamsvej in Copenhagen's Østerbro district") and then you would have to change "on" to "at". μηδείς (talk) 15:23, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest "the Grand Lodge of Denmark is located in Blegdamsvej, a street in Copenhagen's Østerbro district." Americans say that a building is "on" a street but we Brits generally say "in". Take your pick, depending on whether you're using US or British spelling and grammar for your article. Christian X needs a capital "K" for "King" because it's his title, and you don't really need to say that he's Danish. Alansplodge (talk) 16:41, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Would you Brits, Alan, use "at" if there were a street number? If so, adding the street number would be advisable in order to be version-neutral. As for King, you are correct, the title is capitalised when it precedes the name.μηδείς (talk) 20:38, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes we would, but major buildings here often don't have street numbers. I looked up Freemasons' Hall, London which doesn't appear to have one. Alansplodge (talk) 02:34, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Ah, street numbers, just one more reason Ben Franklin beats John Bull!

Great Queen Street is only about 200 yards long. If you can't see a bloody great building like that in a short narrow road, you've entered the postal profession by mistake ;-) Alansplodge (talk) 20:42, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Is "headquarters" singular or plural? ( "Headquarters? What is it?"). As an American English speaker, I would consider it singular, thus "HQ was designed and was built". --LarryMac | Talk 15:57, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, of course the "HQ" ("aitch-kew") sounds okay with a singular verb, since it lacks an ess ending. But HQ usually refers to the agency itself, not the quarters where the command is located. If you were talking of the bureau as an agency, you might say, "Personnel is on the fourth floor, headquarters is on the fifth." (But also note that here you would not use the definite article.) If you are referring to the actual quarters themselves as offices the plural is appropriate.μηδείς (talk) 16:37, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

My use of "HQ" was purely laziness on my part, not a suggestion to use such an abbreviation in an article. However, in your original suggested wording, your first sentence has "headquarters is" and your second has "headquarters were". If it were me, I'd start the second sentence with "It" (to avoid two consecutive sentences starting with "The headquarters") and continue on with singular verb forms. --LarryMac | Talk 20:47, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you could say the building was designed. I would avoid it. I was trying to retain as much of Treeabove's original text as possible, which would require "The headquarters were designed".μηδείς (talk) 21:43, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

A note on date formats. There are two standard styles: (A) October 12, 1927 (which includes a comma) and (B) 12 October 1927 (which doesn't). A is generally favoured by writers in North America, B generally by those in Commonwealth countries. It's possible to write a commaful version of B (12 October, 1927), but there's really no need. The comma is required in A to separate the numbers that would otherwise be juxtaposed. There's no such issue with B. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 20:40, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Isn't there a fancy markup to have the date displayed in the format appropriate for the locale the browser is set for? --LarryMac | Talk 20:47, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

"Headquarters is" was not mine but Treeabove's usage. The singular verb is was retained after the appositive Grand Lodge which is singular in form. When referring to the design of the quarters the plural is still appropriate. There are a lot of issues of style here which I did not think it profitable to go into for Treeabove's sake. I would rewrite much of the text from scratch. But, if we want to retain his original text with the least number of necessary corrections, what I first posted above is best. As for the dates, the commas can be left out if the European format is used. To an American it seems abrupt. I myself would use the American format, expecting some pedantic Brit to "correct" me since Brits seem to have a monopoly on date and metric spellings/formats. Wickerpedier has its ways. The fancy format Larry mentions is fine if you know it. μηδείς (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

You say you'd use the American format, but what I noticed above is that you amended the OP's original European format by inserting commas, which produces a version that is neither the American format (which puts the month name before the day number) nor the European format (which has no need for a comma). -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 22:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, as I said, I would have changed a lot more than I actually did because I would like a more polished style. Were it up to me, I would have used the American Smarch nth, tenteen tickety-two as the date format. But I realized changing the dates to month day, year format would have been a losing prospect. So I compromised. I'd also have said "19.5 meters tall", since I am not Fraunch. The fact remains that my version is an idiomatically native one that retains treeabove's word choice and order as much as possible. No one reading my version would think it was written by a non-native. My goal was to provide a useful correction without going so deep into style as to be of no help improving his English at all. μηδείς (talk) 23:36, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you everyone for your comments and support. A special thank you to μηδείς for the complete translation of my two pieces of text. --Treeabove (talk) 23:01, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

No problem, but it's hardly a translation, just a light editing. Let me encourage you to trust yourself and edit directly in the future. You will be understood. μηδείς (talk) 23:13, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

silent final "e" only in English and French?

Do any languages besides English and French make regular use of the silent final "e" as in "face"? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The so-called "silent e" in English isn't truly silent, in the sense of that it doesn't affect pronounciation. The silent e almost always modifies the preceding vowel sound, cf "can" and "cane". In that way, it serves a real phonological purpose, analogous to, say, the umlaut in German. I would say that the silent e's best analogue is actually accents and other diacriticals such as the umlaut. --Jayron32 18:19, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The phenomenon in both languages comes from a final vowel that was weakened to a schwa then dropped. Final e can still be heard in French in songs such as Edith Piath's Piaf's rendition of Ne Me Quitte Pas where she also rolls her arrs. This doesn't occur in standard English. Final e can be dropped in informal spoken German, written with an apostrophe, such as "Ich hab' nichts gesagt" in Rammstein's Du Hast. You will also hear young Mexican males dropping final e's like noch' for noche. This loss of an unstressed vowel in speech is called apocope, literally "cutting off". If the sound change becomes regularized and the orthography stays the same, they will have developed silent e's, But they might just drop the letter from the spelling, whereas in English the letter is necessay as a way of indicating the vowel quality and in French of indicating that the previous consonant is fully pronounced.

Short answer, I am not aware of any other major languages that have an orthographic silent final -e in the ways that French and English do. But I wouldn't be surprised if there are similar phenomena in other Western Romance dialects. μηδείς (talk) 18:35, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I take it that's Piaf? --ColinFine (talk) 19:45, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Lol, or a portmanteau thereof...μηδείς (talk) 20:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

However, I'm pretty sure that's not Piaf, but Mireille Mathieu, though she has the same r's. See the Youtube comments. Lesgles (talk) 22:40, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I can't speak for the provenance of the video, but I did listen to a Piaf album in French year III in the 1980's and the teacher specifically commented on the final e being pronounced in Ne Me Quitte Pas as it might also be in a poetry recitation. μηδείς (talk) 23:09, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

In Albanian, a final 'ë' is silent, at least in some dialects. Eg "shumë mirë" (very good) is pronounced /ʃuːmmiːr/, at least in Kosovo. --ColinFine (talk) 19:47, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Would such a "shumë mirë" be pronounced differently from an hypothetical "shum mir"? μηδείς (talk) 20:26, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and having looked it up, I've amended the pronunciation I showed above. Isa Zymberi says in Colloquial Albanian (Routledge, 1991) "In orthography, ë is often used at the end of the word to indicate the length of the previous vowel, as in bletë [blɛːt] (bee)"; but later says "ë only indicates the length of the previous vowel for speakers of Gheg, one of the two main dialects of Albanian." --ColinFine (talk) 22:05, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

How very interesting. μ ηδείς (talk) 23:03, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

To add a bit more detail: For speakers of Gheg the ë marks vowel length of the preceding vowel (but they don't pronounce the ë itself), whereas for speakers of southern Tosk, it doesn't mark vowel length but is pronounced as a schwa. But in central Albania (and as such in the capital Tirana), the ë serves no phonological purpose (I would have to look up whether there are any dialects were it is both pronounced and marks vowel length). This is one of the differences between the Standard Albanian spoken in Kosovo and the one used in Albania (Kosovars retain long vowels, Albanians generally don't). --Terfili (talk) 06:18, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

This state of affairs is not all surprising: Obviously, what has happened in Gheg is that short vowels in open syllables were lengthened, then the schwa was dropped but remained in writing as ë and could thus be reanalysed as a marker of length on the vowel in the (historically) preceding syllable. (I suspect that in Central Albania, the length distinction was formerly there and the lengthened vowels were later shortened again, or perhaps there was never any lengthening in the first place. I realise now that Old Albanian is a field that I could use more competence in.) English -e works essentially the same way, except that now, after the Great Vowel Shift, it is not quite obvious anymore that /eɪ/ is the long version of /æ/ (etc.) historically. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 09:48, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Hindi and most other modern Indo-Aryan languages have a silent final a (phonetically [ʌ ~ ə]), which works much in the same way as the silent final e in French, i. e. it is present in orthography, but not pronounced, except for poems and songs. --BishkekRocks (talk) 12:24, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I am very tempted to say German die and sie, and a number of Greek/Latin nouns such as Melodie and Philosophie.

As Jayron says at the beginning: The silent e of English modifies the pronounciation of a word, such as 'can' -> 'cane'. (I remember reading a first-grader learning tip, that putting an 'e' at the end of a word makes the vowel 'say its name'.) The same is true, also of French: a word final -e is silent, in the sense that the e itself is not pronounced, but it does change the prononciation of the word. A syllable final nasal consononant -m or -n, indicates that the previous vowel should be nasalised. However, adding a silent -e after the -m/-n indicates that the vowel is not to be nasalised and the -m/-n pronounced as /-m/ or /-n/ respectively. In other cases, a word final -e indicates that a word final consonant is to be pronounced. Compare Français /fʁɑ̃.sɛ/ (Frenchman) to Française /fʁɑ̃.sɛz/ (Frenchwoman), or intéressant /ɛ̃.te.ʁɛ.sɑ̃/ to intéressante /ɛ̃.te.ʁɛ.sɑ̃t/. Even in the name of the country: France /fʁɑ̃.s/, without the -e, it would be pronounced as /fʁɑ̃/.

In old Dano-Norwegian orthography (17th-18th-early 19th century), there was extensive use of silent -e. In Dano-Norwegian there is a phonemic difference between long and short vowels. This phonemic difference was marked in three different ways: In syllables other than the last syllable of a word, a double consonant indicated that the previous vowel should be pronounced short. However, there couldn't be a word final double consonant, so the final syllable should always be pronounced short. In word final closed syllables, the vowel was doubled, such as in 'Huus' (house), 'Meel' (flour), 'viis' (wise), but dropped when endings were added: 'Huset' (the house), 'Melet' (the flour), 'visere' (wiser). In word final open syllables, this was indicated with a word final silent -e. Such as 'Øe' (island), 'Idee' (idea, loan word), 'Committee' (Committee, loan word), 'see' (see), 'faae' (receive/get, few), 'gaae' (walk), 'staae' (stand). Note that aa is the precursor of the modern å, and considered as a single vowel sound. However, this rather complex system has been simplified from the 19th century onwards, so now, regardless of positioning in a word, a double consonant indicates that the previous vowel will be short. In case it is necessary to indicate a word final long consonant, an acute accent is used: idé (idea), komité (committee).

Today, this can be seen in some last names that haven't had their spelling modernised, such as Moe, (final -e indicated long -o sound: /muː/), originally a farm name, and derived names, e.g. Kirkemoe (possible modern spelling: Kirkemo). A couple of years ago, there was a bit of a brouhaha when it was suggested that some farms that still spelt their names as 'Moe', should have their spelling modernised to 'Mo'. V85 (talk) 05:19, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

The "e" in German sie or Melodie is part of a digraph though, which marks a long vowel [iː] (derived from a historical diphthong [iə] whose spelling was retained and extended to long-i in general; the diphthong still exists in Upper German dialects such as Bavarian or Alemannic). --Terfili (talk) 06:18, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I think final e's in Portuguese are often silent or nearly so, as in bôa tarde and Cabo Verde.—— Shakescene (talk) 08:53, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

A comparable situation also held in Russian writing prior to the reform in 1918, which was riddled with silent ъ characters at the ends of words. In Old East Slavic, presumably, both ъ and ь were pronounced as schwa, while the preceding consonant belonged to the non-palatalised set in the case of ъ and to the palatalised set in the case of ь. Once the schwas were dropped, essentially the modern situation was immediately created.

I suspect that some (Irish, Scottish and perhaps Manx) Gaelic dialects have similar schwa-dropping which is not reflected in the spelling. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 09:57, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Irish only drops schwa when the next word starts with a vowel and there's no pause in between. But Manx does have English-style silent e at the ends of words, such as side [saɪd] "arrow" (cf. Irish saighead). Angr (talk) 10:23, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Russian & Latin names

I realize this is probably too far afield for English Wikipedia, but on the off-chance that someone may know:

There are several languages which adapt Latin names to that language's orthography (e.g. French), while other languages, like English, don't, but I guess it used to be common (e.g. Mark Anthony in Shakespeare, etc).

In particular, Russian does this by using the stem of the Latin noun (i.e. sg. genitive w/o genitive ending) with appropriate Russian endings, e.g. Венера (Venera) rather than Venus, except for some very common words where nominative form stuck for historical reasons (e.g. Марс = Mars).

Does anyone know how and why this came to pass? I don't think this was the rule before 18th century, at least. I've encountered Венус (instead of Венера) and Бахус (instead of Вакх) in texts from Peter the Great's time. My guess is that it could be French influence (or it could be Byzantine Greek), but how do I look for an authoritative study of this question?

Thanks.--216.239.45.4 (talk) 22:52, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

A lot of this is mere historical accident depending on how and when the name entered the language. For instance, a lot of Greco-roman names enter English from French, and some from Latin or Greek directly. For example, jovial from French with Jupiter from Latin and Zeus from Greek along with the native Tuesday. It's not like someone produced an encyclopedic translation of all names which was used by later authors. It is interesting that Luna is found in both Latin and Russian but they are not borrowings but coincidentally identical developments from the PIE *leuk-s-na. You'll have to study each word's etymology in Russian separately. μηδείς (talk) 23:25, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Nowadays, there's a rule for translators of Latin names into Russian, to use the stem (rather than nominal form) and it is always followed for new names. As I've mentioned, there are exceptions for words which were adopted very long time ago. However, I am curious as to why and how such a rule came to be. It's not particularly natural to use the stem, since it never occurs in Latin. --216.239.45.4 (talk) 23:37, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I am not going to be any help looking for a source, my formal training in Russian is very meagre. Have you read such a rule somewhere or been taught it or just induced its existence from recent examples? Is it applied to Greek names? Might it have its origins in translations from the Bible? μηδείς (talk) 01:37, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

There is a certain logic to it. Since the two case systems correspond fairly well, it must have seemed illogical to Russians familiar with Latin to double up the suffixes. Instead, they transliterated the stem and translated the suffix. The Latin nominative -us became -Ø. For Venus, they likely chose Vener- instead of Ven- since the nominative stem can be seen as the exception in the declension (and Russian has far fewer variable stems). But plain Венер would be too masculine, so they added -а. The Russian Wikipedia has a page with the rules, which references an opinionated Soviet article on the subject that you might look at. Lesgles (talk) 04:15, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a useful article. However, he mostly cites the prevalence of the contemporary usage (in 1940 when the article was written) of the stem-based method as compared to the nominative one (he also says it's more logical - maybe). This still only moves the question back one step: earlier writers/translators must have decided that this was a good idea. The earliest translation of the Aeneid (from 1780s) seems to already do it, at least to the extent of dropping -us, and e.g. rendering Paris as "Parid" and Dido as "Didona". --216.239.45.130 (talk) 05:01, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I would guess Russian used to have a convention years ago where Latin nominative endings were retained, but the other cases slavified, this is what happens in Czech, Brutus declines Bruta, Brutovi (as if it were just "Brut") and muzeum declines muzea, muzeu as if it were muzeo in the nominative. After time the Latin endings probably dropped, for the same reason fewer and fewer people are observing Greek and Latin plural patterns in English (enigmata, indices, plectra etc.) Having said that your example of Бахус (instead of Вакх) is interesting, it's not clear whether the double cch would have initially been transliterated as кх or just х...- filelakeshoe 12:06, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

The last syllable of Venus is not a declensional suffix. It's a consonant stem, ancestrally *wenos– or *wenes–; the s was preserved/absorbed before the nominative singular –s, but went to r between vowels (all other cases). Compare neuter tempus, tempora. —Tamfang (talk) 16:33, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I think it goes back to the earliest times. In Old Russian only stems of Greek words were borrowed. Nearly all saints' names in the Russian church calendar haven't the Greek endings. The same was for Greek words in the Bible and ecclesiastic literature. Later (since about the 16th century) when Latin words began to come into Russian they followed already accepted Greek models. Of course there can be exceptions. But I'm afraid that it's impossible to define any rules why some words have broken the existing models and were borrowed as is with endings. Probably it's a matter of chance. I've searched words in my computer dictionary by their ending, but only about 300 ends in -ус, -ум, -ис. Though Latin borrowings in Russian are many more, at least 20-30 thousand. You also should pay attention when you read the 18th century authors. It was the time of Classicism, when everybody was fond of the Classic languages. They thought that (re)latinization/hellenization as well as all Greek and Latin things were more appropriate and prestigious than their native languages. So they used strange forms like Венус etc. This is, by the way, why the country is called in Greek fashion: Rossiya but not Rus', which it was before the 18th century.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 12:45, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Luboslov, thanks, I am well aware of the classicism, but note that the translation of Virgil I mentioned uses the stem method, and it's by Petrov who was one of the typical classicist types at the height of this period. Here's a question that I think someone may know the answer to: what did the Byzantines do with 3rd declension Latin names when written in Greek? I imagine names ending in -o must have been changed to -on, just like Romans changed Greek names with -on to -o (e.g. Plato)? How did they render Maecenas, for instance? Did it get a -t? --216.239.45.130 (talk) 16:32, 6 June 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:0:1000:5E03:FA1E:DFFF:FEE5:B9AE (talk)

Isn't Maecenas already a Greek name? Anyway, that's a good question about the Byzantines...I was thinking I could find some examples of medieval Latin names in the Alexiad when the crusaders show up, but Anna Comnena seems to have heard all the western European names in French rather than Latin. ("Hugh" for example is not the Latin "Hugo", which would have been a good example of the third declension, but the French "Hugues" which she apparently heard as "Ubos".) But there are other possibilities...Emperor Otto II had a Byzantine wife, for one. There must be some third declension Latin place names that they recorded too. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:38, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I've noticed the same thing in Bosnian and I've been thinking about it for some time. Venus (>Veneris) becomes Венера/Venera, Ceres (>Cerera) becomes Церера/Cerera, Iuno (>Iunonis) becomes Јунона/Junona, etc. Surtsicna (talk) 12:40, 8 June 2012 (UTC)