Look up Wiktionary:Information desk in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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"Apple" is one word. If I'm not mistaken, "New York" is also one word, it just happened to have a space inside the word. (Please correct me on this if I'm wrong.)

But what about "unfunded mandate"? Is it considered two words or one big word? Mũeller (talk) 03:05, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Two words, because an "unfunded mandate" is a kind of mandate, whereas "New York" is not a kind of York. See also English compound. --Jayron32 03:36, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

... and "New York" is two words, even though it is a compound proper noun. The "New" was originally an adjective, though not regarded as such for long. Dbfirs 06:44, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

York 50.4.236.254 (talk) 12:43, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

New York is not "another" York unless it's an exact replica. A city name is just an arbitrary label. It could be renamed Bloombergburg and it would still be the same city. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:56, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Before 1664 it was New Amsterdam, then is was renamed in honour of the Duke of York, not the city. Dbfirs 16:24, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the name New York was used says that it was named after the city. In honor of the Duke, yes, I'm sure, but after the city. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 02:26, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Either way, New York is not "another York". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:50, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The name was often spelled "New-York" during the 18th century and into the 19th. However, it would be considered two words by most linguistic criteria. AnonMoos (talk) 15:10, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Unfunded mandate is a term used by women to describe a date with a man where they have to pay their own way. Also known as "going Dutch". :-) StuRat (talk) 13:20, 16 September 2017 (UTC) [reply]

The advantage to the woman with going Dutch is that she won't feel like she "owes him" anything. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:54, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And if he tries anything, a wooden shoe to the crotch should curb his enthusiasm. :-) StuRat (talk) 04:25, 17 September 2017 (UTC) [reply]

I'm currently working on an article in my sandbox about a French animator named Xavier Ramonède and have come across this page [1] about a short project, on which he's credited as an animator. Google translate is able to help me understand most of the source, but doesn't do a perfect job. The source says, "Ce n'est pas tous les jours qu'un carré de soie a droit à une pub en animation, c'est donc d'autant plus surprenant de découvrir le joli spot Hippopolis, basé sur une illustration de Ugo Gattoni, et vendu donc en foulard par Hermès."

Google doesn't seem to know how to translate the word "pub", so it's unclear to me what kind of a project this is. Can anyone help with this? Thanks! --Jpcase (talk) 17:33, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That would be an ad/commercial (pub is short for publicité = advertisement) for some sort of silk handkerchief or neckerchief sold by Hermès. --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:26, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Thanks! --Jpcase (talk) 18:39, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I know los gringos is a term to describe a foreigner (such as American) in a Spanish-speaking country. I also know mestizo means someone of part-European and part-indigenous American ancestry. In addition, many Americans do have indigenous North American ancestry and European ancestry in their bloodline. So, would an American be recognized as gringo because s/he is a foreigner or as a mestizo because of mixed race between indigenous American and European? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 18:46, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Gringos. To be accepted as a mestizo, you need a lot of Indian blood, like 50%. The other 50% should be European Spanish, but the main thing is lots of Indian blood. If you look like the average American, you're a gringo. —Stephen (talk) 19:58, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think you mean Native American or Indigenous American blood. Does the type of Indigenous American matter? Aztec, Mayan, Incan, Native American (ancestry from the tribes in what is now the USA), and the Inuit? And of course, there are the Indians of India. If Mom is India-born American and Dad is European American with ancestry from different ethnic groups all over Europe, then is the child a gringo or mestizo? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 20:35, 16 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, not East Indians. Also, the Inuit have a different look and probably would not be recognized as mestizo in Mexico. Most Mexican mestizos that I have seen claim Aztec roots, but Mayan and other Mexican, Central American, and South American tribes would be included. Most Mexicans are mestizo, in my experience. I know and talk to a lot of Navajos, and they very often identify as Indians, and I often use that term as well. I don't recall hearing of East Indians being called Indians, but maybe I just didn't notice. —Stephen (talk) 07:52, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In Spanish, as in English, the same word means both "Native Americans" and "People from India". See es:Indio. --Jayron32 10:49, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What the fuck is this, a Monty Python sketch? African or European? I dunno...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah μηδείς (talk) 02:54, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if Dad was European American, I suppose he might be pining for the fjords. :-) StuRat (talk) 03:51, 17 September 2017 (UTC) [reply]

That term mestizo literally means "mixed" and refers to those of mixed European and AmerIndian heritage.[2] The term gringo refers to a foreigner.[3] As far as I know, gringo is insulting but mestizo is not. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:49, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Gringo most certainly does not refer to a mere foreigner. It refers to NW Europeans, mostly white Brits and Americans, or those who could pass for one--and not Latins. It would not apply to a black American, a Hindu, or a Chinaman in any sense. μηδείς (talk) 04:57, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it be nice if we had an article on everything? One that could e.g. include the phrase "which may have different meanings depending on where it is used", to make people aware that maybe their local impressions are not the whole truth? Well, a man can dream... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:00, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We have an article on White supremacy. We may have articles on Hispanic Supremacy and the racisms of random ethnic groups. No, it would not be nice to have articles on any of these. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:46, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to see visual depictions of a whole long list of racial sub-classifications in the Spanish empire, look at Commons:Category:Casta paintings (however, gringos are not included)... AnonMoos (talk) 15:12, 18 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What digits separator does Canadian French use? Our article on the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique merely uses a space, which I've seen in some other languages but not English. This made me wonder whether the space were common in Canadian French, but its article doesn't discuss digits separators. Browsing fr:Catégorie:École au Québec shows me that it's really hard (if at all possible) to find numbers of four or more digits, aside from years, so I'm not at all sure what to think. Nyttend (talk) 02:43, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be space (with the comma as a decimal point). Here are some articles in different newspapers:

• Le Journal de Québec: example.
• La Presse: example.
• Le Journal de Montréal: example

And some tax forms:

• A federal tax form. (Here's the corresponding English form.)
• A Quebec provincial tax form. (Here's the corresponding English form.)

I don't say that everyone uses the space, but those examples seem strong evidence that it's a common usage. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 05:46, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In Canadian French, the comma is used as a decimal separator, and a space (technically it should be a non-breaking space) is used for numbers with 5 or more digits. It's optional, and I think less common, for numbers with four digits. There are several articles about numbers in the Office québécois de la langue française's "Banque de dépannage linguistique", but they're all in French: La typographie : Nombres. The federal government also has a "Guide du rédacteur" with a chapter about numbers, all in French as well. The way people actually write numbers in French may differ, but these are the official recommendations from the federal and Quebec governments. (Adam Bishop (talk) 10:42, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Thousands separator and Decimal mark#Examples of use has relevant but unreferenced info. Note that SI style for English uses spaces. jnestorius^(talk) 19:18, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone have any references regarding the etymology of Georgian ნეკრესი? DTLHS (talk) 05:08, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

According to German Wikipedia: "In the fourth century, King Mirdat established a church in Nekressi where one of the thirteen Syrian fathers - Abibos Nekresseli - was active in the 6th century." Presumably one needs to know the origin of his name, which is unlikely to be Georgian. μηδείς (talk) 05:39, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Other sources call him Abibos of Nekresi or Abibus of Nekresi, so he may well be named after Nekresi rather than the other way around. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:59, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I looked into this at some length, a reference book of Georgian geography is needed. I think Nekresseli is likely to mean "of Nekresi" since Georgian is a suffixing language (e.g., -shvili ="child of") and it is unusual for a toponym to be shorter than its source. μηδείς (talk) 19:16, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, -eli means "from" according to Georgian names, so Abibos Nekreseli apparently just means the Bishop of Nekresi, a dead end. μηδείς (talk) 00:51, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The -eli suffix can be seen in all 13 names of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 08:56, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

were those the names they were known by though? the uniformity suggests it's modern, like the -ski in "Nikolay Kuzanski" or "episkop kenterberiyski" in Russian. Most people probably parse those as adjectives anyway, not as last names.80.171.0.120 (talk) 17:02, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have read that when indicating a subjective feeling, the adjective must go before the noun. Anything else? 'Cuz I swear I have seen a phrase like this:

• el malo hombre
• el hombre malo
• el hombre negro (by the way, does the color black have any significance in Spanish-speaking countries? Or does it really mean the Black man, as in the man's race is black?) 140.254.70.33 (talk) 17:21, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• The rule is pretty much the same as in French, BAGS; beauty, age, goodness, size--these adjectives usually precede the noun. Also, placing the adjective first implies the quality is essential, rather than accidental. E.g., El amarillo sol might be used in a sense to refer to the fact that there are no blue or green suns. El sol amarillo sounds a bit odd, as if there were pink and purple suns.

There are also special pairs like antiguo. Mi antiguo carro = "my former car"; Mi carro antiguo = "my antique car". See any good Spanish grammar, and Spanish adjectives. μηδείς (talk) 18:53, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

On another website, it reports that subjective feeling should direct the adjective in the beginning.

• la mujer vieja means the old woman. (Indicative of the fact)
• mi mejor amigo means my best friend. (Opinion)

I am just wondering if there are any other grammatical rules regarding this I'm not aware of. Like what are the exceptions? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 21:47, 19 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very complex matter, not easily treatable in the format of the ref desk. Again, one could say "la mujer hermosa" which would contrast her to not-so-pretty women, or one could say "la hermosa mujer" which would mean that beauty is the essence of womanhood, sort of like "America the beautiful". In many cases there's a choice of emphasis and more freedom than in English. For example, "el gran capital" might be used just to refer to the capitol which happens to be great, while "el capital grande" would pick out the larger of two capitols. "El estupido estudiante" in an abstract sense would imply all students are stupid, while "el estudiante estupido" would be picking out a single student as stupid compared to the rest. μηδείς (talk) 01:08, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I sense that we are not using the same terminology/phrasing. Previously, I focused more on subjectivity/objectivity dichotomy, but you just focused more on emphasis. So, are you suggesting that objective statements are made with less emphasis on the adjective and more on the noun, while subjective statements are made with more emphasis on the adjective and less on the noun? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 12:59, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have to read your source. I've only ever taken three classes in Spanish, in the upper level composition course it was explained that putting the adjective before the noun expressed either emphasis or that a quality was essential to the noun, rather than distinguishing one noun from another. This is something most speakers do intuitively.

So if you said in English "Ignorant peasants do not understand their own interests" with the meaning that all peasants are ignorant by nature, in Spanish you would say "El ignorante campesino no conoce su propio interes" while if you wanted to say that the one peasant who happened to be the ignorant one (out of many who might be quite sharp) owned a cow, you would use the usual order "El campesino ignorante tiene una vaca" and this would imply there were other peasants who weren't ignorant who might have cows or not--but you were pointing out the ignorant one of the lot.

To use your examples, "El mal hombre destruye su mundo" would mean man, who is inherently an evil creature, destroys his own environment, while "El hombre malo mata gatos" would mean a specific man who is evil kills cats, in implied contrast to the good man who doesn't.

μηδείς (talk) 20:42, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Italian has an interesting contrast between (say) sporco comunista, "dirty communist", which is an insult, versus comunista sporco, which also means "dirty communist", but in the neutral sense of a communist who happens to be physically unclean, and does not reveal the speaker's attitude towards communism. That doesn't seem to fit exactly into the rubric above. Does Spanish have a similar distinction? --Trovatore (talk) 20:57, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Troubadour I'd say that falls under the essence category. Sucio comunista and comunista sucio would fit the Italian exactly to my ear. μηδείς (talk) 00:25, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• BTW, to address an original question, one simply says la vieja (the old woman) or el negro for the black man or the old woman. The adjectives take on a nominal role, especially with people. "El hombre negro" would imply something special, like the man dressed in black, or painted black in most cases. μηδείς (talk) 00:41, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed it is. Any examples? Let's leave aside the question of first names, e.g. those places named along the lines of Mount Smith (10 characters), named after Alexander Smith (14). Carbon Caryatid (talk) 16:18, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Are you including demonyms? For words like Mancunian for resident of Manchester, which is shorter by one letter? Or for features named after persons only? And what are you counting as a name? New York is named in honor of James, The Duke of York, does that count as "shorter"? The city of Baltimore is named in honor of Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, which is still shorter even if we only count his name as "Cecil Calvert". It's unclear what restrictions you wish to place on the situation.--Jayron32 17:20, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rome, from Romulus, though he may have been invented afterwards. - Lindert (talk) 17:23, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Most likely Romulus was a backformation given that it isn't even the only foundation myth of Rome, and the other major myth doesn't even involve Romulus and Remus, that being the Aeneid. --Jayron32 17:27, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's not too clear from our "Aeneid" article, but while Aeneas was claimed as an ancestor of the Romans, he founded Lavinium, not Rome. (His son founded Alba Longa.) AnonMoos (talk) 18:11, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Romulus and Remus are a reworking of the PIE myth of the Divine twins, with Romulus being a distortion of geminus, "twin". (See, e.g., Tiberius Gemellus.) The etymology of the city's name is usually attributed either to an obscure Etruscan source or to the PIE root "flow" which shows up in stream and rheum. μηδείς (talk) 21:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The question is asking to leave aside places named after people, so I assume we are looking for things like Scot from Scotland or Irish from Ireland or Briton from Britain or Breton from Brittany...maybe this isn't so unusual... Adam Bishop (talk) 17:25, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We weren't asked to "leave aside places named after people", we were asked to leave aside the case where the toponym is shorter because it omits the person's first name. If Christopher Columbus was the man's actual name instead of an anglicization, Colón (any one of them) would qualify because it's shorter than "Columbus". (Then again, maybe it still qualifies, as it's also shorter than his actual name "Colombo". It depends on how you feel about forms of the name in different languages.)

I have one good one, though: Pakistan means "land of the pure" but also incorporates an acronym formed from several place names.

Another category is places like Milan, London, and York where the name has been shortened over the centuries from an earlier form (in those three cases, the original name was in Latin). I don't think these should be counted either.

In The Story of Language (2nd edition, 1965), Mario Pei claims that Baltimore, Ohio, merged with adjacent Basil, Ohio, to form a town named Baseball. However, as you see from the links, Wikipedia disagrees, and so does the Geographic Names Information System, though apparently Basil was a name for Baltimore or part of it. So that one is bogus. But maybe there have been actual mergers of places where the new name was formed from parts of the old ones? --69.159.60.147 (talk) 19:42, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Columbus is the Latin version of a name that would be Colón in Spanish and Colombo in (standard) Italian. People in former centuries were much less reluctant to do such translations than is often the case today... AnonMoos (talk) 20:44, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed; and another example like this would be Tolyatti in Russia, named after Palmiro Togliatti --82.69.159.206 (talk) 07:49, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Scotland is named after the Scots (who according to legend are named after an Egyptian princess). Iapetus (talk) 09:04, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• The impetus for this discussion is the question above about the origin of the name of the Georgian town of Nekresi. μηδείς (talk) 20:56, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How about my home town of Even Yehuda, named after E. Ben-Yehuda? --82.69.159.206 (talk) 07:49, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What does shortness refer to? What about languages that do not use the Latin script? --92.75.104.125 (talk) 16:31, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How is this supposed to be used? Does it mean exactly like worked, or are there some differences?

• I worked on my homework last night. It was hard.
• I wrought on my homework last night. It was hard.
• Cloudy-puff wrought all day on the land, for it was sowing season.
• Cloudy-puff worked all day on the land, for it was sowing season.
• This iron is wrought by the local blacksmith. That's why it is called wrought iron.
• This iron is worked by the local blacksmith. That's why it is called worked (pronounced wrought) iron. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 22:27, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Wrought is the past tense of wreak. Wreak and work come from the same root in Germanic, but wreak is archaic, and is pretty much only used in the term "to wreak havoc". Maria wrought havoc on Puerto Rico would be a valid modern usage. You could say "the damage wrought by Maria was catastrophic" if you wanted. Wrought iron does mean "worked iron" but in that case it is interpreted as a specialized adjective. Don't use wreak or wrought in normal speech or writing, except for those two set phrases, "wrought iron" and "wreak/wrought havoc", otherwise you are liable to be misunderstood, make a mistake, and sound odd, to say the least. Worked is never pronounced wrought. μηδείς (talk) 23:00, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As the Wiktionary page you cited says:

It has become common to use wrought, the original past tense and participle for work, as the past tense and past participle for wreak, as in wrought havoc (i.e. worked havoc for wreaked havoc), due both to the fact that the weak form worked has edged out wrought from its former role almost entirely (except as an adjective referring usually to hand-worked metal goods), and via confusion from the wr- beginning both wreak and wrought, and probably by analogy with seek.

It's therefore misleading (if not just plain wrong) to say that "wrought is the past tense of wreak". Many people, including me, use wreaked as the past-tense form of wreak and in most cases use weak worked as the past-tense form of work, though wrought survives in certain specialized or archaic uses. I'd say that of the OP's examples 1 & 4 are idiomatic in modern English; 2 & 3 are proper but unacceptably archaic; 5 is justified because in this case the obsolete past wrought explains the usage in the term wrought iron; and 6 is incorrect. Deor (talk) 23:17, 20 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, Deer, that's just crazy talk. Of course wrought is the past tense of wreak. What are you suggesting, that wrought is the past tense of burp? The fact that some people innovate and use solecisms like *wreaked has nothing to do with anything the OP asked. Should he go buy some wreaked iron railings for his front steps? People say all sorts of stuff, like the ship sunk, when they should be saying the ship sank. Let the OP know that you are using substandard modern innovations if you want to play this game. I gave him the proper, historical, educated answer. μηδείς (talk) 00:18, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Every dictionary I own says the proper, historical and educated answer is that "wrought" is the archaic past and past participle of "work". It arose in the 1200s as wroght, a metathetic variant of worht, past participle of worchen ("to work"). Using "wrought" as the past tense of "wreak" is the recently-developed mis-usage innovation. The past tense of "wreak" has always been "wreaked".--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 05:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wrought iron in contemporary usage is iron that has been worked into an artistic or decorative shape. Examples are twisted or spiralled battens that support a bannister on a staircase, fancy twisted spirals that hold up a letterbox or form part of the frame of an ornate gate or fence. "Wrought iron" is not usually used as a description for plain metalwork such as brackets and beams, even though these may require a large amount of processing to form them. Akld guy (talk) 01:56, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wrought and wreak are not particularly related.[4][5] Wreak is more connected with wreck and wrack. However, wright is related to wrought.[6] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:22, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• As I said, work and wreak are distantly related forms of a root that goes back to PIE and the various forms derived from them have become confused over the years, reanalyzed, and so forth: From Middle English wreken, from Old English wrecan, from Proto-Germanic *wrekaną, from root *wrek-, from Proto-Indo-European *wreg- (“work, do”). The nitpicking is to be expected, these are the point-scoring cavill pages after all. But the answer I gave the OP stands, don't use wreak unless you mean damage and wrought is the proper fixed-use adjective for black iron worked by a blacksmith. But to use wreak to mean work generically is wrong in modern usage. Wrought should only be used in modern usage where iron or the past of to wreak damage is concerned. μηδείς (talk) 05:55, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But your advice "don't use wreak ..." and statement that "to use wreak to mean work generically is wrong in modern usage" have nothing to do with the question asked by the OP, who was concerned with the usage of worked and wrought as past-tense forms of work. No one but you thinks that wreak has anything to do with the matter. Deor (talk) 09:16, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And we now have another example of WP:RD participants getting all worked up and overwrought about a post. <shamelessly using WP:RL/D as a linguistics MOOC since 2006> There's a term, yeah, for when consonants play musical chairs around their vowels in cognates - as in work and wrought - something like "anaphylaxis" or somesuch </shamelessness>? --Shirt58 (talk) 11:41, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Metathesis (linguistics) -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:05, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

謝謝, AnonMoos --Shirt58 (talk) 10:08, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chambers' Dictionary says that the past tense of "wreak" is "wreaked", formerly "wroke". 92.19.170.106 (talk) 10:41, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Suppose a woman from, say, Jiangsu province in China. She marries a man from Wuhan and has a kid. She then invites her own widowed mother to take care of the child. As a result, the child speaks Jiangsu and standard Mandarin (parents use Mandarin as lingua franca). Then, the kid goes to school. At school, the kid probably learns standard Mandarin, but on the playground, the kid learns to speak Wuhan. Also in school, the kid may learn English as a foreign language. Would that be two, three, or four languages? Is the kid bilingual at birth (two varieties of Chinese) or bilingual in third grade (Chinese and English)? If a person speaks Latin American Spanish and Spain Spanish, is that bilingual, or is it only bilingual if that person learns a very different language, like English or German or French or Portuguese? What about Cockney speakers in England who can speak American English because of too much American TV? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 00:06, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

These definitions are not infinitely precise in the way you want them to be. A language is not a countable object, like a ball. I can have two balls, because balls are discrete things. The things we call "languages" are not discrete things. They exist on a continuum, they evolve, they intermingle, etc. The language spoken today in one place is an artifact of that day and place. It will never exist again, not really, and it has never existed before, and its in finding this change that you can get lost in the study. Simply put, the edges between languages are far too fuzzy to answer your question in any meaningful way. A concept like "linguistic distance" is NOT quantifiable, and as such, it cannot be used to make comparisons with. At very broad strokes, we can make clear distinctions between languages that don't bump up against that fuzzy edge. Nahuatl, Mandarin Chinese and Icelandic are all sufficiently distant to be considered different languages, and a person speaking all three is clearly trilingual. But what of a person who speaks Received Pronunciation, Scots, and Patois? The question you ask attempts to erase these fuzzy edges, and replace them with bold, sharp lines. The real interesting stuff isn't there, however, if languages were balls, we could just point at them. "There, that's a ball". Nothing interesting. Where linguistics is interesting is in the fuzzy edges themselves, where definitions aren't easy, where things are messy, where we build our armies and navies. There's the intellectual wealth. So, no, your question cannot be meaningfully answered. But that's what makes linguistics a fascinating field. Were your question answerable, it would not be interesting. --Jayron32 02:55, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In short, the inquiry is interesting, but unanswerable. I merely asked the question in relation to the perspective that bilingual people benefit from bilingualism. I wonder what is considered "bilingualism" then to obtain such a benefit. Is learning a new language required at all for monolingual native English speakers who really don't need to learn other people's languages because of English's status as the lingua franca. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:32, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just an addendum on my diatribe there. If you really want to get as close to answering your question as you can (or at least get into where linguistics comes closest to the issues you're asking about) start at places like Abstand and ausbau languages. It's one model to attempt to answer the question. To (over)simplify it a bit, in the first example I gave, the Nahuatl, Chinese, and Icelandic one, those languages have an abstand relationship, they have bright lines that make them easy to distinguish from each other. The second set of 3 (Standard English, Scots, and Patois) have a more "ausbau" relationship, being evolutionarily related. Even then though, Kloss is using some rather broad, qualitative strokes to make comparisons here. He's not assigning numbers we can connect dots with and create bold lines. Just ways to understand what is going on inside the fuzzy edges, a language to speak about it with, rather than a mathematics to calculate with. Its a way to converse about linguistic distance, but it doesn't provide hard answers. --Jayron32 03:40, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In practice, each person decides for himself. If you can speak American English as well as Cockney, you can claim to be bilingual, if you choose. It is possible that a movie producer might be interested in an actor who is fluent in Texan and Cockney. At the same time, if a position in a company or school has a multiple-language requirement, it is up to the school or the employer to decide if your languages fulfill the requirement. Generally speaking, an American university almost certainly would not recognize your Texan and Cockney English as fulfilling a foreign-language requirement. —Stephen (talk) 03:47, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mutual intelligibility has some thoughts on the definition of what constitutes "a language". Spoken Chinese and written Chinese are "two different pairs of shoes", as we say over here. Do you understand what this expression means? I mean even if we use exactly the same language, there is no 100 percent match. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 05:32, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Some companies claim that being bilingual is helpful. However, I think they are based on narrow studies on Spanish and English or more distant languages like English and Chinese. It would be interesting if the same thing applies on very similar languages. Then, that may serve as a hard indicator for distinguishing the "hardness" of a language and whether one truly has a bilingual brain. If there is a spectrum of benefits, then that may suggest one needs to set an arbitrary point, like in statistics, and make that the point at which one accepts a job candidate. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 11:59, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For masculine nouns, one should use él. For feminine nouns, ella. For neuter nouns, according to SpanishDict, ello. I think this is neuter subject pronouns while lo is for neuter object pronouns? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 16:16, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: there are no neuter nouns in Spanish. Abstract ideas are considered neuter. The pronoun lo is not the object form of ello... lo means you, him, it (masculine).

Most of the time, "it" (as a subject pronoun or object of a preposition) is not used in Spanish: hace frío (it is cold). ¿Sabe bien? (Does it taste good?) It is possible to say "it" as a subject pronoun or object of a preposition in Spanish, but it's rare: ¿Me apoyo en el bastón? No, no te apoyes en él. (Do I lean on the staff? No, do not lean on it.)

Most of the time, él refers to an animate being, such as a man, an animal, or a bug, and means he, his, or him (very rarely is it used as an inanimate thing).

Ello is almost always used in the plural, ellos (they, them, theirs, masculine gender). The singular ello, being neuter, refers to an abstract idea because, as I mentioned, there are no neuter nouns in Spanish: José trató de localizarlos en cuanto tuvo fuerzas para ello. (José tried to find them as soon as he had the strength for it, where "ello" refers to the abstract idea of trying to find.) —Stephen (talk) 17:21, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How would William the Conqueror have pronounced “William”? Would appreciate a reference. 70.67.222.124 (talk) 16:53, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's hard to say, reconstructing the phonology of past language is fiendishly hard, we do know a lot about the Norman language of the 11th century he would have spoken; written Norman looks something like modern French (much moreso than, say, the language of England at the same time does to the language of England today, c.f. Anglo-Saxon language to English language.), and modern French native speakers could probably read it with only a little difficulty. However, reconstructing what Norman of the middle 1100s would have sounded like is hard. The Wikipedia article mentions nothing of the phonology. We can presume some level of closeness to French, given that they are both langues d'oil. Wikipedia's article Phonological history of French gives some clues, perhaps if you take the modern French name Guillaume (given name) and work through some of the phonological changes listed there, you'd get something close to what it may have sounded like in the 11th century. --Jayron32 17:26, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Was this a translation? What was the original Korean word he used if so? DTLHS (talk) 17:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have not seen or heard the original, but the word Kim Jong-un used was probably 늙다리 (neukdari, dotard), possibly in the phrase 늙다리미치광이 (neukdarimichigwangi, loony old dotard). —Stephen (talk) 17:28, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]