Difference between revisions 3801552 and 3802308 on enwiki

:''Geoffrey (the fun I could have by adding bad translations...but I didn't)''
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

You mean things like "we go back to my place, bouncy-bouncy?" and such? ;) -- [[User:JohnOwens|John Owens]]
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

This critter is a little long (38kb).  I wonder if it isn't possible to split it into smaller pieces. [[User:Emperorbma|Emperorbma]] 05:03 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

For some reason, I think perhaps the length, it's not letting me edit some spellings or add new words. [[User:Manika|Manika]]
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

What part of speech is "Russian", "Greek", etc. supposed to represent?  Is it referring to the name of the language or a speaker of the language (or someone of that ethnicity)?  I ask because the current entry for "Greek" is the feminine adjective form, correct for a female Greek person, or for feminine-gendered non-person items (like the Hellenic Republic).  However, it is incorrect for the name of the language, which is EllinikA, not EllinikI. --[[User:Delirium|Delirium]] 22:26, Aug 30, 2003 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

== ''il es nihil'' = welcome? ==
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

I don't speak Interlingua, but the translation for "Welcome", ''il es nihil'', looks suspiciously like "it is nothing", which would be very close in meaning to "you're welcome." If I recall, Spanish has an idiom, ''de nada'' (spelling here may be way off...), meaning something like "it's nothing," which is used in this way. When I see the word "Welcome" standing alone, I think more along the lines of "Greetings," as in "Welcome to my home." In that context, I'm guessing that ''il es nihil'' would make no sense. [[User:Rholton|Anthropos]] 14:01, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

:Quite so. I've adjusted the section, but my Interlingua is a little rusty so someone else may wish to double-check my work. --[[User:Brion VIBBER|Brion]] 14:33, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

I've moved three fictional languages to a new page called '[[phrases in fictional languages]]'. It seems to me that fictional languages are really a different topic altogether: the people who are interested in them and the people who are looking for common phrases in different languages are likely to be coming from rather different angles. To be honest, it seems to me that there's also something a bit wrong with putting a 'language' from a book or a tv series (even if it's one you *really* like) on an even footing with a real language that people actually speak, and which is the product of thousands of years of, like, culture and stuff.   --[[User:Tremolo|Tremolo]] 04:30, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


:I've moved that page to [[Common phrases in constructed languages]], and added some more constructed languages from this page to that one. -- [[User:Pne|pne]] 09:55, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

I presume the [[Frisian language]] is [[West Frisian language]] as they are not mutually comprehensible. [[User:Secretlondon|Secretlondon]] 23:04, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

---
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

Hm. Do you speak English and Can you speak English are subtly different... but I suspect that the true intent is to get the person you are speaking to to speak in English. But I can't think of a better (polite) replacement for that purpose. - [[User:Zhen Lin|Zhen Lin]] 11:08, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

"Do you speak English?" is a polite request about a person's preference. It does not imply that the person might not be able to speak English. (But in the case that the person does not know how to speak English the speaker is reasonably safe because the person spoken to will be unlikely to understand the question either. So no offense would be given.) "Can you speak English?" sounds a little less polite. It could be interpreted to indicate the belief on the part of the speaker that the other person ought to be able to speak English (and is ignorant or stupid if unable to do so). It would be offensive if understood, regardless of whether the person spoken to could respond or not. I'm reminded of getting onto an airplane and sitting next to a lady from Great Britain. "Do you read?" she asked, offering me a book. "Can you read?" would have been the wrong thing to say. The other function of the original question is to give the person asked the chance to say, "Yes, I do speak English, but only a little.  Please talk slowly." [[User:Patrick0Moran|P0M]] 02:38, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

----


I disagree with [[User:node ue]]'s decision to change the SAMPA into IPA - in my opinion, IPA support (especially in fonts) is not good enough yet that this will be an improvement. -- [[User:Pne|pne]] 12:52, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

:Same thing here. Did sie have to change to [[International phonetic alphabet|IPA]]? I don't know about hir, but for me, some characters (such as the postalveolar fricatives) don't display properly in that page. Perhaps we should change the font to Arial Unicode, or something like that? --[[User:Fibonacci|Fibonacci]] 15:29, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

::Please no fixed font suggestions; that may look better for you but worse for others. -- [[User:Pne|pne]] 13:23, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

:::You're right, [[Linux]] users wouldn't see it right. But then, if that font is not used, what do you suggest? Plain Arial looks catastrophical to me. --[[User:Fibonacci|Fibonacci]] 05:16, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

::::I suggest that you obtain a font that contains all the characters you are likely to encounter and that looks good and set it as your browser's default. Alternatively, get a browser that does better font-substitution (e.g. setting the entire "word" in the same font rather than just certain characters, if that's what you prefer). Only you can decide what looks best to you, and only others can decide what looks best to them.


::::Unfortunately, that's much more easily said than done, since good fonts with a large range of glyphs are hard to come by, and you have little influence on the rendering engine of your browser or your operating system. But I think that would be the optimal solution. -- [[User:Pne|pne]] 15:03, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

:::::Okay, I found a font that contains all the characters I'm likely or unlikely to encounter, all the characters I've seen so far and possibly all the characters I'll ever see (can you guess what font is it?). Now, how can I mess with the rendering engine of my browser, so as to make it the default? --[[User:Fibonacci|Fibonacci]] 23:39, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
⏎


⏎

⏎
⏎

::::::I don't know which font you found; perhaps Code2000, Bitstream Cyberbit, or Titus whatever-it's-called? And how to set up your browser will depend on which browser you have... I suggest you ask in a place dedicated to internationalisation and/or support for your chosen browser, since I don't know that many browsers and how to fiddle with their options. -- [[User:Pne|pne]] 09:39, 24 May 2004 (UTC)⏎
⏎
== Chinese stuff ==

I changed some of the information in the Mandarin Chinese section.  In particular I removed the examples of measure words given by the poster because a) they were both (!) incorrect and b) not likely to be of particular use to people who don't already know what a measure word is.  I changed it to simply saying that the existance of measure words would cause the 'ge' to be replaced, occasionally, with other syllables.  I also mentioned the use of na as an alternate pronunciation of nei; while I don't say it that way myself it does have wide currency in Southern China.

The measure words given in the examples were zhi for chopsticks and zhang for a table.  While these both seem logical, they aren't correct (at least not in the Mandarin I speak, which is standard on the mainland, at least).  You could possibly make a case for zhi being used for chopsticks, but mostly you hear ba3, not zhi.  Given that pens are zhi you'd guess it would be zhi for chopsticks too but that's not how the language works.  Measure word categories are, in essence, much like grammatical gender -- sometimes logical but often not.  As for zhang, that's just totally off.  tai2 would be correct for a table, usually.  Zhang ''is'' used for flat things, but they're usually flat and thin, as in "a sheet of paper", not as in a table.

Anyway, unlike in Japanese, which is very picky about measure words (or so I understand), many young people nowadays just seem to use ge for everything, or almost everything, which personally hurts my ears but it makes it easier for tourists to communicate.