Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 July 11

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July 11

Xenophon, Hiero 1.7

εἰ τὰ ἐν τῷ ἐγρηγορέναι σαφεστέρας ἡμῖν τὰς αἰσθήσεις παρέχεται ἢ τὰ ἐν τῷ ὕπνῳ

I try to understand the sentence - but I don't understand τὰς αἰσθήσεις παρέχεται. tr. if sensations, when we are awake, are clearer (to us) than when we are asleep. τὰς αἰσθήσεις παρέχεται- what is it acc cum inf?\there are sensations?

thanks, --84.108.213.48 (talk) 08:19, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

This English translation may help you. Omidinist (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

So this is how I would read it:

The τὰ is the subject of παρέχεται, τὰς αἰσθήσεις is the object. παρέχεται is middle so it can mean "present themselves as" (the subject is plural, but neuter, so the verb is singular). So "the things in being awake" (i.e., things experienced while awake) present themselves as clearer perceptions to us. σαφεστέρας is of course just an adjective modifying τὰς αἰσθήσεις (hence they are both feminine acc. plural words).

So the full sentence (from before where you quote) in Translatese: "And perhaps [this is] no surprise if the things in being awake present themselves as perceptions to us clearer than the things in sleep." Or in actual, albeit poor, English: "And perhaps it's no surprise if things are presented as clearer perceptions to us while awake than they are in sleep." The translation you give above is fine too.

Proper English cannot closely match the syntax of the Greek. Part of what makes it so hard to translate is that ἐγρηγορέναι is of course being used as a substantive, but English does not have a substantive which closely matches its meaning.

--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 21:30, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Yesterday

As far as I recall, the word "yesterday" was always pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, "YES-ter-day". Recently I seem to be noticing increasing numbers of people saying "yes-ter-DAY". Where did that one come from? Or has it been around all the time, but I've never noticed before? 86.160.87.31 (talk) 17:42, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

I just checked several dictionaries, and none of them have stress on the last syllable, even as an alternate form Wiktionary [1], Miriam Webster [2], NOAD (local copy), and OED (link requires institutional or paid personal access [3]). Interestingly, NOAD, OED , and MW mention "YES-ter-dee" as a possible variant. So - from this I conclude that what you describe is a rather recent or regional/local pronunciation. Where do you hear this, and from what kinds of speakers (e.g. young white people in big cities) ? I'll also add that I've never heard that pronunciation, living in 5 different states all around the USA. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:01, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

The OED's /-dɪ/ is a short vowel, not "dee". I've never heard a final stress here in the UK either, but there is a slight secondary stress on the final syllable. Dbfirs 21:14, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Oops, my mistake, stricken above. But MW and NOAD give /-dē/ which I thought meant a long e sound... SemanticMantis (talk) 23:26, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

It does. Those dictionaries consider the vowel of "happy" to be tense /i/ (not really "long" since American English doesn't have distinctive vowel length), while the OED considers it to be lax /ɪ/. It's a difference in dialect, but over the past several decades the /ɪ/ pronunciation has been losing ground to the /i/ pronunciation in both the UK and the US. Not only "yesterday" but also the days of the week "Sunday, Monday, Tuesday" etc. were formerly usually pronounced with the "happy" vowel at the end (think of Solomon Grundy whose surname originally rhymed with "Monday" and "Sunday"), but nowadays the full "day" pronunciation predominates. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 05:28, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

I recall hearing "Mundee", "Toosdee", etc. in the US when I was younger, but not so much nowadees - er, days. Maybe still a regional thing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:33, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Maybe you ran into Charles Aznavour fans. Here's Dusty Springfield's rendition. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:21, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

As in "yes-ter-DAY, when I was young". Sometimes you have to mess with the proper pronunciation of a word to make it fit a song. It would be interesting if the OP could find some youtubes with this usage in normal conversation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:43, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, G & C Merriam Company: emphasis is on the first syllable. Beatles, Yesterday, as I recall they emphasize the last syllable. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 02:37, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

First syllable, except when the rhythm of the song kind of compels Paul to stress the second and/or third syllable.[4] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:09, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

I sometimes hear /jɛstəˈdeɪ/ in north-west English regional accents: "He came to see me yesterDAY." Its existence is referred to here. Bazza (talk) 23:04, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Grammatical gender

For languages that has the same number of grammatical genders (masculine/feminine or m/f/n) are stuff that are masculine usually stay masculine across languages? (There should be exceptions, but I am not sure how often) If not, are there ways to determine the gender of a new word that is encountered? Thieh (talk) 22:21, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

There are so many exceptions (just one example "flos" is masculine in Latin but while the derived word "il fiore" remains masculine in Italian, other Romance languages changed it to feminine, "la fleur in French, "la flor" in Catalan, Portuguese and Spanish or "floarea" in Romanian and "la flur" in Romansch) that it's hard to establish a rule, though there are some patterns, see gender assignment. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 October 1#Changing gender ? for examples.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:17, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

@Thieh: is that the question you were asking? I interpreted the question to mean "if the word for table is feminine in one language, is it feminine in all languages with grammatical language?" If that's what you meant, the answer is definitely not. In French, "table", "chair", and "moon" are all feminine while "sun" is masculine; in German, "table", "chair", and "moon" are all masculine while "sun" is feminine. In Irish, perversely, "girl" is masculine while "stallion" and "boy scout" are feminine. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 05:33, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

I was asking about differences between the languages with same set of grammatical genders (like among french/spanish/portugese or between German/Russian). But Sluzzelin seem to answer the question for me. Thieh (talk) 16:56, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

German is Germanic and Russian is Slavic. You can't compare these two. German and Russian both have three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and cases. However, Russian doesn't have articles and differentiate between animated and inanimated nouns. So it makes only sense to compare languages with same roots. As for Romance languages, many nouns do have the same gender, but this is not always true like French "le lait", Italian "il latte", Spanish "la leche". In Italian and Spanish, most words ending in -o are masculine, most words ending in -a are feminine, but there are exeptions. In French, it's a bit more difficult, but there are still endings which are clearly masculine or feminine. And these endings have equivalents in Italian and Spanish which also have the same gender like in French "l'université", Italian "l'università", Spanish "la universidad" (all feminine). --2.245.88.139 (talk) 12:00, 13 July 2014 (UTC)