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August 25

DOP

This WaPo article on the conviction of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh says, at the end of its fourth paragraph, that Singh describes himself as being a number of things ranging from "Spiritual Saint" to "Allrounder Sportsperson", with the last role being "DOP". What is DOP in this context? I wasn't able to find anything likely either in our DAB on DOP or Urban Dictionary's entry on DOP. -- ToE 12:16, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

The page [1] elaborates as "Spiritual Saint/Philanthropist/Versatile Singer/Allrounder Sportsperson/Film Director/Actor/Art Director/Music Director/ Writer/Lyricist/Autobiographer/DOP”. It could mean Director of Photography? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:20, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

It certainly doesn't mean "modest". Alansplodge (talk) 01:20, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Dispenser of praise (self)? Clarityfiend (talk) 18:22, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

A quick check on abbreviations.com threw up "dirty old pervert" as one suggestion. Wymspen (talk) 11:03, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

August 28

About Draft:Where are my friends (nursery rhyme)

Hi WP:RD/L all,
From what I can google up (and with my very limited Chinese), the lyrics to this song start with "一二三四五六七, 我的朋友在哪里..." and it appears to a somewhat ubiquitous children's song.
What do think about this?
彼得 in 澳大利亚 aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I looked this up on Youtube. I don't recall ever having heard this song during my early childhood years in China. But it's been a while since then (late 80s/ early 90s). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:42, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Looking the lyrics up on Google Books, there seems to have been an essay called "There is a song" (有一首歌) by Xi Murong that has been used in exams in Taiwan, which recounts that in 1946 she was taught the song with lyrics as "One two three four five six seven, where are my friends? In Nanjing, in Shanghai - my friends are here". "一二三四五六七/我的朋友在哪里/在南京/在上海/我的朋友在这里". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:07, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Do right-to-left languages make writing easier for left-handers?

^ Or do left-handers of those languages (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) have struggles of their own? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 12:45, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Not directly apropos, but languages are not left-to-right, writing systems are. In particular, early Greek was written right-to-left (probably inheriting this from the Phoenician alphabet), and sometimes in Boustrophedon, before eventually settling (more or less) on left-to-right. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:29, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

If the ease of writing in one direction or the other is mainly due to not smudging the ink of what you've just written, then that would be mostly irrelevant for writing systems which were not commonly written using ink... AnonMoos (talk) 15:22, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

P.S. If most readers of a language are not fluently literate, and read very slowly, then boustrophedon is actually the easiest for them... AnonMoos (talk) 15:30, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

It's both ink smudging and also being able to read what you just wrote. In classical Chinese (which is written top to bottom, then right to left), both issues are made less of a problem because of the top-down approach, but the residual risk is mitigated because of the way one is supposed to hold the writing brush - i.e. with the wrist in the air and not on the table. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:16, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Why do we have the letter X despite it not having a special sound??

Let me see if I got this right:

Our X comes from the Latin alphabet, where it already had the ks sound it has today. The Romans borrowed their X from Etruscan, where it also had this sound. How about in Greek?? In classical Greek, the letter chi had an aspirated k, similar to the k+h in "elk horn". (It clearly makes sense that Greek didn't have the sound of German ch at the time the alphabet was formed, because if it did, they probably would have used their descendant of the Phoenician letter cheth for this sound, but they didn't. Some early Greek variants used it for the consonant h, but classical Greek used it for the sound of English long a.) But in the archaic Western Greek alphabet, which the Etruscans got their alphabet from, chi represented k+s. Why?? I believe it was a simplification of the "chi plus sigma" combination. But why did they even want a single letter for the k+s combination?? Is there any reason?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:39, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Although our letter "X" may look like the Greek "chi" it actually sounds like the Greek "xi" (written Ξ and ξ in upper and lower case respectively). Wymspen (talk) 14:57, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Your statement is a description of the classical (or Eastern) Greek alphabet, not the archaic Western Greek alphabet that the Etruscans and Romans got their alphabet (including their letter X) from Georgia guy (talk) 14:59, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Georgia_guy -- It seems quite likely that the earliest form of the Greek alphabet (as first adapted from Phoenician) would have ended at Ypsilon (see chart 27 in chapter 3 of The Early Alphabet by John F. Healey), and of course would have included the letters Digamma, San, and Qoppa. Various local Greek communities adjusted this earliest form of the alphabet in different ways to meet the needs of the Greek language (in each case their own particular form of the Greek language). Some of those adjustments (such as adding the letter Phi and dropping the letters San and Qoppa) eventually became widely accepted across most of the literate Greek-speaking world, but others were not, leading to local alphabet variations. And of course, those dialects which did not possess the sounds [w] and [h] had no need for the letters Digamma and Heta. What we now call the "Classical" Greek alphabet is based on the Ionian form of the Greek alphabet adopted at Athens in 403 BC. The Roman alphabet derives from the Etruscan alphabet, which derives from a Western Greek alphabet introduced to Italy through Cumae. For whatever reason, those who developed several varieties of the early Greek alphabet thought it was desirable to have letters writing the sound combinations [ps] and/or [ks] (perhaps parallel to the letter Zeta, which probably represented [zd] and/or [dz] in various dialects of the time), and the Latin letter X is a remote legacy of this... AnonMoos (talk) 15:13, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh, it must parallel zeta. So the next question is, why did zeta get used for dz or zd rather than delta+zeta or zeta+delta?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:17, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Because in those dialects the sound [z] did not exist except as part of the [zd] or [dz] combination... AnonMoos (talk) 15:25, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

And the Greeks didn't recognize the sound as a double sound that includes a d as part of it?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

They did, at least by the time when they developed grammatical scholarship and theory. The ancient grammarians are quite explicit about Ξ,Ψ and Ζ being "double" consonants, and what segments they consisted of (although in the case of Ζ they remain curiously vague about the order of those segments, s+d or d+s). Of course this meta-linguistic insight may have had little to do with the initial decisions of those who developed the writing system centuries earlier. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:39, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

So why couldn't they just use delta+sigma or sigma+delta?? Did they need something to do with the Phoenician zayin to make sure it is still useful in their alphabet?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:41, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Georgia_guy -- By (late?) Hellenistic times, earlier [zd]/[dz] had become [z], now a separate phoneme, so the whole thing became moot. AnonMoos (talk) 15:49, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Here's a summary of the Ancient Greek sources on the pronunciation of zeta at different times. Double sharp (talk) 23:54, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Georgia_guy -- In various forms of Middle English, [ž] occurred only as part of the combination [dž], and there was absolutely no recognized or common orthographic method of writing the [ž] sound outside of a [dž] affricate, and the common methods of writing [dž] did not include the letter "d". (Only spellings for what was originally a doubled affricate [ddž], such as "dge" etc, included a letter "d".) English didn't really develop a clear spelling for the [ž] sound standing alone until the 20th century ("zh"), and then mainly in response to the need to transliterate foreign languages... AnonMoos (talk) 15:45, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

About your initial question regarding the letter for /ks/, a pointer to the literature is here: [2]. You'll notice that Woodard is describing its existence as "seemingly superfluous" and surprising, so there may indeed be no very clear and unambiguous answer to the "why" you wondered about. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:55, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

P.S. In belated reply to part of your original posting, the Phoenician letter ח represented a voiceless pharyngeal sound, IPA [ħ], and it's by no means a priori clear that in a language contact situation it would have been automatically identified with an ordinary velar fricative, IPA [x]... AnonMoos (talk) 16:00, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

For an alternative, but highly interesting theory on the origin of the Greek letters phi, khi and psi, see Barry B. Powell: The Origin of the Puzzling Supplementals φ χ ψ (JSTOR). Cheers ✦ _hugarheimur 16:16, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

• You mean like xylophone, or Bexar County, Texas, or Xóchitl? --Jayron32 20:11, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

• It might also be pointed out that Latin has very few final consonant clusters, but /ks/ is one of them: lex, rex, index, pontifex. There is also /ps/ spelt "bs" as in urbs, but that is rarer. There are also the Claudian letters. μηδείς (talk) 22:01, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

You forgot -ns, which is very common (though it's a contraction of -nts)... AnonMoos (talk) 04:52, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I did not "forget" -ns, which is simply a derivational ending, rather than a nominal form of actual nouns with -g roots. But I have no problem with it. μηδείς (talk) 21:54, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Chinese characters

Suppose that something is written in Chinese with Character A in the traditional form and with Character B in the simplified form.

1) Is Character A always, in all contexts, the traditional correlate of the simplified Character B, and vice versa?

2) Is there a reliable online service that identifies if a given character is traditional or simplified, and converts it to its simplified/traditional correlate?

--Heavetarim (talk) 19:15, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

This website may be useful. The link provides both traditional and simplified forms. You can also use Google Translate. As for the first question, I would say yes, but sometimes the traditional form and simplified form are one and the same. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 22:41, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Neither is completely true, because some characters were merged during simplification: simplified 发 corresponds to both traditional 發 "distribute, become, depart, issue" and 髮 "hair", for example. Furthermore 后 exists in both simplified and traditional, but in the former it has also subsumed the function of 後. Double sharp (talk) 23:59, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

To OP's second question, some automatic converters work fairly well in context by referencing a database of phrases. For example, as Double sharp referred to, 后 in simplified means both "queen" and "back", whereas the two meanings are represented by different characters in traditional. The way an automatic converter will assess which traditional character it should be, is by looking at the context. This is of course not error free, especially if the sentence being constructed is short or unconventional. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Chinese Wikipedia has some kind of conversion system which seems to work reasonably well (at least there seems to be less tension between traditional and simplified users there than between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese speakers on Portuguese Wikipedia, as far as I can tell, speaking neither language). AnonMoos (talk) 05:26, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

On Chinese Wikipedia you sometimes need to add manual conversions. But the more significant source of tention is not about how one character converts into several, but when different regions use different words for the same thing. It doesn't help matters when a particular region has multiple usages, e.g. for foreign place names the Hong Kong government now uses the same translations as the mainland Chinese government, whereas most Hong Kong people still use different, traditional translations. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:37, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

No. The answer to the second question answers the first one too. Simplification doesn't mean the modification of every character. It's not about lumping characters together either. Both character sets should rather be regarded as different standardizations. There are also instances where the simplified version opted for a character with more strokes or created several characters. While 鍾 generally becomes 钟 in simplified Chinese, the character 锺 (only left side changed) for the surname was introduced in 2013. Therefore, converting traditional to simplified characters is not easier than vice versa. Although Google Translate can give you a first draft, it's highly unlikely that it's void of conversion mistakes due to different readings and meanings one character can have. --92.74.25.214 (talk) 05:57, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

What kind of (British?) accent is this?

You can listen to it, once you play the video. On one hand, he sounds a Brit (probably), having a native accent (certainly). On the other hand, it's sometimes rhotic, sometimes not, along with some other non-British features I'm not familiar with (but maybe I'm wrong). For example, listen mainly to the way he pronounces "to find OUT" at 0:00:15 moment, and "creatures" (rhotic?) at 0:00:17 moment. 185.46.78.7 (talk) 20:10, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

That's David Tennant so a Scottish accent from his background. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:13, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Thankxs. 185.46.78.7 (talk) 07:32, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

And (since there are many easily distinguishable "Scottish" accents – even I as a Sassenach can identify Fife, Dundee, Edinburgh, Stirlingshire, Glaswegian and Western Isles accents fairly reliably) specifically a West Lothian accent (which is close to Edinburgh). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.204.180.96 (talk) 21:15, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

What I meant was you could attempt to "work it out" from Tennant's heritage, upbringing etc, all of which contribue to the accent. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:20, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't disagreeing, only being more specific, in part to counter the unconscious assumption by some non-Brits that there's only one Scottish accent. That the accent is, at first level, Scottish is surely completely obvious to anyone with any familiarity at all with British accents, let alone anyone who actually lives in the British Isles. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.2301.95} 90.204.180.96 (talk) 02:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

West Lothian? Interesting. Anyways, I loved the way he pronounced "to find OUT", at 0:00:15. I Haven't heard it before, though. Is it typical of West Lothian accent? Or maybe of all Scottish accents? As far as I know, "Regular" Brits (e.g. near-RP speakers and likewise) don't pronounce it that way, do they? 185.46.76.35 (talk) 07:32, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

If you think that "Regular" Brits are anything like "near-RP speakers", you're very much mistaken. And you must remember that Tennant is what we Brits call "an actor", and so is given to unusual and inventive emphasis of all kinds. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:41, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

No, I didn't say that (what I called) "Regular" Brits speak like near-RP speakers, I said the opposite: Near-RP speakers speak like (what I called) "regular" Brits, i.e. they constitute an example (an example only) of what I called "regular" Brits. Just like the relation between being a Frenchman and being a person: Not every person is a Frenchman, yet every Frenchman is a person (even though the Frenchmen constitute a minority only, among the people of the world). Anyways, I've always been quite aware of the fact, that near-RP speakers constitute a minority only, among the Brits. However, they are still (what I called) "regular" Brits, in that they never pronounce "find OUT" the way he pronounces it, do they? As for your last comment: Ok, got it, thank you. However, do you know of other Brits who pronounce "find out" as he does (at 0:00:15 )? 185.46.76.35 (talk) 08:04, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Ah ok, fine. Yes, we don't all talk like Jacob Rees-Mogg ("wiv plums in 'is mouth", as Ali G might say). But I was suggesting that the "to find OUT", " is not really an regional accent thing, it's just a dramatic nature documentary voice-over thing. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:59, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I think better to say English English or England English, RP being a subset of that. And despite having a great variety of accents this area still shares a lot of similarities which strikingly set it apart from other regions of the UK. Moreover, comprising more than 80% of the UK population many indeed consider English English as the "typical" or "regular" British English: and in a sense this notion is quite accurate. The other regions differ more from England than the accents within England among themselves. In your particular example >90% of Scotsmen pronounce the "ou" sound that way: either [ɐʉ] or [ʉ], while few if any south of the border say that way. The same goes for "r": at least 3/4 of Scotsmen are rhotic speakers, even though for many speakers there is a tendency to omit "r"s, and the actual realization of "r" varies. In England rhotic accents are very actively becoming extinct with very few enclaves remaining (West Country in particular). A few such marked pronunciations combined and you cannot take a Scotsman for an Englishman, no matter from the North or the South, RP or non-RP. You haven't to look for it for long, just listen to any Scotsman, e.g. in any Scottish radio station.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:04, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

on the "The other regions differ more from England than the accents within England among themselves" bit. It is well documented that the dialects of England itself are widely varied, wider than other English-speaking regions. In general, dialects tend to be more varied in a smaller geography the longer a language has been spoken in a particular geographic area, that's why the most dialect variation in North America happens on the east coast (where English has been spoken the longest in North America) and that's why England has the greatest variety of English Language dialects among all English speaking countries. Regional accents of English and English language in England has this information this implicitly, this discussion at Quor is more explicit and does an excellent and succinct job of noting that England does have a wider variety of English accents than anywhere else in the world, and explaining why that is so. This page run by the British Library discusses the bewildering number of distinct dialects, while it covers all of the UK, the variation is clearly greatest across England. This blog also notes "There is greater variety of dialects in Great Britain because the language developed over a millennium and a half, from a mix of languages spoken by various settlers from elsewhere in Europe." The notion that English is more homogeneous in England is exactly backwards, England has the LEAST homogeneous language of any major English-speaking nation. --Jayron32 12:27, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I do not need a likbez about English accents, as I'm very well versed in this matter. I've explained myself clearly: there are a certain set of isoglosses that set the accents of England apart from the accents of other regions of the UK, particularly Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is very easy for me to spot a Scotsman just by couple of sentences; and even though I know a Scouser and a Cockney may sound very different, I often fail to spot from which subregion of England an English person comes from: until they speak a very broad accent (like no foot-strut split), all Englishmen sound quite alike for me. But this is not the case in other pairs like English vs Scottish, or English vs Irish, or Scottish vs Irish (I cannot say for sure for Wales as I'm least familiar with it).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:14, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid that "for me" is not a reference. One should not speak from a place of authority when the only basis for a claim is based on personal experience. One should default to what others, especially outside reliable sources from people who have studied these things as professionals, have to say on these matters. That's why everything I noted above was a summary of what others have said on these matters, and referred people to those sources so they could read for themselves what those sources say. That's what we do here at the reference desk. Telling others about what we experience, and then expecting that what we have experienced should be understood to be a universal truth, is not the right way at all. --Jayron32 15:40, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

The certain isoglosses that set the accents of England apart from the others do not depend on my opinion. I believe I've already repeated this three times and I'm not going to do this four times. They simply exist. I shared my experience rather to inform than to prove. Alright, my experience that proves the theory is just a coincidence. Be free to persist on your opinion. But, please, refrain from shaming other contributors, what to do and what not to do, we all do our best. If you think I'm doing it wrong, I'm OK to never edit this page again.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:38, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I've never once said you were wrong. Please do not put words in my mouth. What I said was to request to provide people with references so we can read about what reliable sources have to say on the topic. You know, like I did. --Jayron32 18:44, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• Is a regular Brit anything like a True Scotsman? --Jayron32 11:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• Or indeed, the other... betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:33, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

The point is that the Irish, the Scottish and the Welsh have their own languages. When they speak English their vowels are influenced by their native tongue. 92.8.219.206 (talk) 17:23, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

That's a valid point, but it's not the point. See User:Jayron32's useful input above for an outline of what I think is the main point. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:31, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

The 'native tongue' influence is usually at some remove, because only a small proportion of people in those nations actually speak those native tongues as their mother tongues, while a larger but still minority proportion speak them at all (Scots Gaelic 1.1%, Irish Gaelic 17.6%, Welsh 19.0%): the majority come from families who have been monoglot English speakers (in terms of their childhood language and accent acquisition) for several generations. Nevertheless, it is interesting how characteristics of the 'native' language persist in the local accents of English. One obvious example is the substitution of 'd' or 't' for 'th' in Irish English, stemming from Irish Gaelic lacking that consonant. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.204.180.96 (talk) 18:17, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

If you're talking about native tongues and Scots people you really do need to mention Scots language. DuncanHill (talk) 11:32, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

August 29

Does philo- words automatically mean a person is not part of the thing but "loves" it as an outsider?

I am specifically considering Judeophilia and Sinophile. The Wikipedia article Sinophile provides a list of sinophiles, and none of them seem to be actually of Asian descent. I suppose if one loves one's own nation, then one is not a phile, but a patriot. And there is the term, Sinocentrism, which suggests that China is the most superior country [in the known parts of the ancient world from China's perspective]. But does that indicate "love" for one's own culture or is that a similar concept like American exceptionalism? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:21, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I can't find any example of a -phile term that would normally apply to one in the group bring emulated. Terms like jingoism and nationalism and chauvanism come to mind regarding irrational attachment to ones own culture. --Jayron32 03:28, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Off topic

Irrational? Or emotional? Emotion is not exactly rational. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC) Why irrational? The preference for one's own kind is natural: it is ingrained into human nature, and in many cases it has its own rationale. The other question is that it has become castigated and censured for ideological reasons in the West.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:08, 29 August 2017 (UTC) Are the two of you claiming that every form of attachment MUST be rational? Because I have never claimed the opposite, which is to say that I have never stated that every attachment must be irrational, so your argument is odd here... Who is claiming that attachments could not be rational?!?! I certainly never once did that. --Jayron32 11:40, 29 August 2017 (UTC) I understood you that you said the first things which came to your mind "regarding irrational attachment to ones own culture" were nationalism, etc. Which is not necessarily the case. Nationalism, despite its semantic overload, has not to be irrational; and in most cases it is not: it is very easily to explain why people like their own family, nation, country or simply persons which share some similarities (like language or race). Simply because people are egoistic by nature, they like themselves first of all, then they like the people/things which resemble them. So one cannot regard it as an irrational attachment. Even jingoism and chauvinism, despite being aimed outward rather than inward, may be rationalized. Frankly, I cannot say what attachment is irrational, everything may have some reason. When some people call some social phenomena "irrational", in many cases they say they dislike it and simply refuse to understand. Sorry for this off topic, I'm OK if we agree to disagree on that.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• Slavophile Шурбур (talk) 07:11, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Have, Haber, Happening

The English words, happening and have, have English/Germanic roots. Haber has Latin roots. Yet, they mean nearly the same thing! Is this a coincidence? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 13:21, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• No. Haben and habere are classic false cognates. Шурбур (talk) 14:54, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

  Unless they have the same PIE roots. --Jayron32 15:36, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

  Which they don't, as is Шурбур's point. (Germanic habban points to IE keh₂p- as per the Germanic consonant shift, Latin habeo to IE gʰeh₁bʰ-). Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:44, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

So, it is just a coincidence then. But a coincidence doesn't mean the two entities are related. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 16:23, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Right. Hence the term "false cognate". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• The English cognate to the Latin habere is, ironically, "to give". (Apparently the act was seen as reciprocal in PIE). The Latin cognate to have gives us the root of the Latinate capture. μηδείς (talk) 15:55, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

August 30

Þa wealas ne cwǽdon on Lǽdene sprǽce [Why do the Welsh traditionally speak a Celtic language?]

Why do the Welsh traditionally speak a Celtic language? Most other dominant peoples in late Western Roman times spoke a degenerate Latin that survived the collapse of imperial power and influence, even to the point that the local Germanic invaders took over the Latin dialect in places like Lombardy or Gallia. No wonder that the English kept their language and didn't adopt a form of Latin if the local native peoples weren't speaking Latin (or at least weren't to the point that they kept it up when they were pushed out of what's now England), but if the Britons spoke a Latin dialect until they were exiled to what's now Wales, why did they return to their Celtic roots then, or if they stopped speaking it at an earlier time, why did they stop then? Nyttend (talk) 02:36, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Significant parts of Wales were somewhat of a backwater during the Roman period: not extensively settled with Roman villas or as fully incorporated into the Roman economic system as the southeast was, and not as extensively militarized as areas near the walls (though there was a Roman legion fort at Caerleon). AnonMoos (talk) 05:14, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, then, but weren't the Britons from elsewhere on the island driven into Wales at the coming of the English? Nyttend (talk) 11:18, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps, but those Britons spoke Welsh, or a language closely related to Welsh. The Brittonic languages dominated basically all of modern England, with the Pictish language in east Scotland and the Goidelic languages in west Scotland and Ireland. Those people who would have been driven into Wales from eastern parts of Britain would have spoken a recognizable language and had a recognizable culture to people already in Wales, so they would have assimilated rather easily, and would not have caused a profound change in local culture or linguistics. Which is not also to say that the Welsh language did not have significant influence from other peoples in Britain; as would be expected the Welsh language has significant loan words from Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman French sources. --Jayron32 11:48, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Nyttend -- there's a lot we don't know in detail about events in 5th and 6th century Britain, and some of the assumptions and terminology (such as "degenerate"[sic]) in your original question don't seem useful to me, but one thing that's pretty clear is that those areas of Roman Britain where the largest percentage of the population was likely to be Latin-speaking were the same areas that were most heavily smashed up in the Anglo-Saxon invasions, while areas that were least likely to have a high percentage of Latin speakers (i.e. Wales outside of its southeastern corner and Cornwall) were least disturbed by the Anglo-Saxon invasions -- so from that point of view it's not surprising at all that the surviving pre-Anglo-Saxon languages of Britain are Celtic, not Romance... AnonMoos (talk) 13:26, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

See British Latin. 92.8.219.206 (talk) 14:44, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

And Common Brittonic. Note that Cornish and Breton have some mutual ineligibility with Welsh; Brittany was colonised by British refugees at the end of the 4th century, see History of Brittany#Early Middle Ages. Alansplodge (talk) 17:15, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Also why the place names of Brittany are redundant with Southwest England, c.f. Cornouaille and Cornwall, Domnonée and Dumnonia (Devon), etc. --Jayron32 19:32, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Bergensk?

Is she speaking Bergensk? Count Iblis (talk) 04:33, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, to me, this sounds like your typical Bergensk dialect. Regards, decltype (talk) 13:39, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Sasuke Uchiha

In expanding Sasuke Uchiha article's real world information, there have been addition of free images like his Kusanagi sword. However, I can't find a single source that references Kusanagi's origins even thought it is quite popular in Japanese mythology. There is a book I found in google books called Ficitonal Swords but I can't get a single view and appears the book uses Wikipedia as a reference. Regards.Tintor2 (talk) 23:08, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I haven't read it, but this article might be of interest:

• "The Kusanagi: Unseen Legendary Japanese Sword". Ancient Origins. 26 May 2016.

2606:A000:4C0C:E200:DD4C:BCA6:CE45:3A6F (talk) 18:12, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, but there is no mention of Kusanagi in popular culture as far as I read.Tintor2 (talk) 18:22, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

That article has online references that could be helpful. 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:DD4C:BCA6:CE45:3A6F (talk) 18:31, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

P.s.: click on the "Read the article on one page" link.

Thanks, it's not too specific, but one of the articles makes a mention of Kusanagi appearing Naruto.Tintor2 (talk) 19:42, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

September 1

How is Chinese writing taught to complete foreigners?

By "complete foreigners", I am referring to people who start with no knowledge of the language. Do teachers say out the brushstrokes in Chinese while writing? What about the radicals of characters? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 00:52, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

[3]. --Jayron32 01:15, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Oh. I meant in a physical classroom setting, not online. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:14, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

• Like Chinese people, they would probably start with Pinyin, not Hanzi. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:16, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

And when you get to the characters, you start with simple ones like 一 二 三 and 人 and 天, and build up from there. The same way that character writing is taught to Chinese kids, pretty much. And it's easier to start with the more logographic ones. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:19, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

So... teachers normally don't say 竖弯钩 when writing down the brushstroke. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 11:15, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

You would have to introduce what "竖弯钩" means before you can talk about it - this applies both to kids and foreign learners. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:30, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Hanzi are divided into four categories, Beginning, Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced. See wikt:Appendix:HSK list of Mandarin words. Additionally, you would study the radicals: wikt:Index:Chinese radical (especially to become familiar with their shapes, strokes, and sort order). Indices by number of strokes, from one to sixty-four, is very helpful: wikt:Index:Chinese total strokes. —Stephen (talk) 23:04, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

The reason I asked the question was that I wondered how do completely non-native speakers of Chinese learn Chinese writing, specifically whether they would come to recognize the radicals by, for example, the English name (i.e. roof radical) or whatever language the learner speaks natively or Chinese name (i.e. 宝盖头）of the radical or brushstroke movement. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 23:37, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I doubt that even native Chinese speakers know how to name the strokes since there are some disputes in calligraphy as to how many different strokes there are. People are more familiar with radicals since you need them to look up characters. Generally, it's not that different from writing Latin letters. You'd have a sequence of boxes with one more stroke added each time. Just copy them like a child. Names can be acquired later. --92.74.25.214 (talk) 06:24, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Fine. Then, my experience is special then. At least I know two native Chinese teachers who tend to say out their brushstrokes while teaching students how to write. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 16:59, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Jin Kazama

While the article's reception section is quite a bit, I barely managed to find creation information for Jin Kazama. I only know of two books that might contain information about it: Tekken 3 artbook and Tekken Hybrid. I have no access to neither of them. Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 14:57, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Scientists who study meteors

Is there a name for scientists who study meteors? If they study minerals, they're called minerologists; but meteorology means something completely different. Thanks. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 17:55, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Try astronomers. And by the way, "meteorology" originally meant the study of things high in the sky, which is why weathermen are called meteorologists. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:00, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

To this day, the International Cloud Atlas treats clouds as a species of hydrometeor, itself a species of meteor. jnestorius^(talk) 23:22, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

The science is meteoritics and a person working in the field is a meteoriticist. --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:12, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Excellent word for Scrabble. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:16, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Jacques-Philippe Cornut

Would somebody be able to help with the English translation of: "Canadensium plantarum, aliarúmque nondum editarum historia nondum editarum historia cui adiectum est ad calcem enchiridion botanicum parisiense" for the above article please? I believe the first part is "Canadense plants" and the last part I think is "to be added to the end of the Handbook of Parisian Botany" but the part in the middle I'm unclear on--Jac16888 ^Talk 17:58, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

The title given in the New York Public Library catalog is "Canadensivm planatarvm, aliarúmque nondum editarum historia. Cui adiectum ad calcem Enchiridion botanicvm parisiense, continens indicem plantarum, quae in pagis, siluis, pratis, et montosis iuxta Parisios locis nascuntur", which is more or less "Canadian plants, and other unpublished material. Which can be appended to the end of the Botanical Manual of Paris, listing the plants that are native to the villages, the woods, the meadows, and mountains." - Nunh-huh 18:19, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

That's great, thank you--Jac16888 ^Talk 19:27, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

"To which should be is appended" I think, rather than "Which can be appended to"; but it doesn't make a great deal of difference to the meaning. --ColinFine (talk) 21:36, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Further nitpicking: "historia" is the subject of it all, so it's "A History of Canadian Plants, and other unpublished material, to the end of which has been appended the Botanical Manual of Paris" (plus "containing an index of the plants that are native to the countryside, forests, meadows, and mountains around Paris" in the part that Nunh-huh added). So it does change the meaning a bit - the Canadian plants are at the beginning and the botanical manual is at the end, as Colin noted. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:07, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

In that context, "historia" would be better translated "account", rather than "history". The meaning in Latin is wider than it is in English. Wymspen (talk) 11:10, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Removed my "should be": I misread adiectum as a gerundive. --ColinFine (talk) 11:43, 2 September 2017 (UTC)