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September 3

What is the Origin of the Surname Kılıçdaroğlu?

I know that "oğlu" means "son", but don't know the origin of "Kılıçdar". A prominent person named "Kılıçdaroğlu" is Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. KKY883 (talk) 06:37, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary has and entry on it at wikt:Kılıçdaroğlu, deriving it from "kılıç (“sword”) +‎ -dar (“bearer”) +‎ -oğlu (“son”)." Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:49, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 5

Illari Quispe Ruiz

https://overwatch.fandom.com/wiki/Illari

Would it be more accurate to state her full name (Infobox) as being Latin American Spanish or Quechua? Need to know for Wikidata purposes Trade (talk) 22:36, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Illari and Quispe is predominantly Quechua, Ruiz is Spanish but not necessarily Latin American. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:38, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The game is voiced in Latin American Spanish and English, according to the page. I say es-419. In game, the character could be considered to speak es-PE or whatever Quechua dialect she uses, but the work she is in is Latin American Spanish, I understand.

--Error (talk) 17:34, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Compare https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q828542 . Name in native language is "Winnetou (German)", not Apache.

--Error (talk) 17:38, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not even sure if Winnetou would even mean anything in Apache language. Once, I tried looking up a web-based Lakota dictionary to see if Yakari would mean anything, and the best I could come up with was "Sitting Crow", admitting that I know just about nothing of Lakota grammatical and syntactical rules... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:02, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Winnetou is very likely some kind of distortion of Manitou. It seems a little strange that this isn't mentioned in the article... AnonMoos (talk) 18:52, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 6

-ou

Are there any English words where final -ou represents /aʊ/ other than thou and the truncations thou ("thousand") and trou ("trousers")? 71.126.56.187 (talk) 14:53, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This list of English words ending in "ou" are all fairly recent loan words except "you". Alansplodge (talk) 15:37, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is mostly the fault of the fact that ow has become the standard spelling when it is final. Originally (in Anglo-Saxon) it was spelled u and pronounced like the modern English oo in moon. But because English was influenced by French, it became ou when Middle English evolved, and u was used for the modern descendant of the French u sound that English lacks. Because of the Great Vowel Shift, ou in English (which comes from Anglo-Saxon long u) became the sound it has now in out, and for some unknown reason was re-spelled ow at the end of a word. Long u in English (which comes from Anglo-Norman long u) became the you sound, which is now often simplified to oo after certain consonants. Georgia guy (talk) 15:48, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

However, in the Black Country dialect of the English Midlands, "you" is pronounced "yow". Alansplodge (talk) 15:19, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can I change Wikipedia so that articles appear in American English? If so, how?

I use Wikipedia a lot. The articles contain British spelling. I wish to change the Wikipedia content to articles with American spelling. Is this possible and, if so, how do I do this?

Thank you. Bcgura (talk) 18:19, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English --Viennese Waltz 18:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since Wikipedia does not use slang, it should be fairly easy to program a browser extension (a person I saw online in one weekend both learned the Chrome extension tools and made a basic version of this) or even, if your only interest is Wikipedia, your own customized CSS stylesheet, with UK-to-US replacement rules encoded.

As a template, you can view the source of Josh May's javascript tool (the javascript is linked in the webpage source, and the replacement dictionary is linked from that) and then tinker from there. (Also, be sure run the javascript source through a code beautifier to make it readable.) SamuelRiv (talk) 18:55, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are of course a lot of hazards and edge cases in doing this. Many names would be respelled, such as Victoria Arbour, various place names, and band names such as Living Colour. Exceptions such as Broadway theatre would be incorrectly corrected. Some differences are grammatical, for instance bath can be a verb in Br Eng, and that one would be left unchanged. I was also trying to come up with an ambiguity such as rearise, which could sometimes be parsed as re-arise, but at other times be equivalent to Am Eng *rearize, meaning "to make more rear". Fortunately that's not a word. Card Zero (talk) 05:20, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some respelling errors can be avoided by not touching terms that are not in the lower case expected for a common noun in sentence case; these are probably proper nouns. You also don't want to touch literal quotations, like Churchill's "Here indeed was the Irish spectre—horrid and inexorcisable!"^[3] Next to grammatical differences there are also lexical ones, e.g. British English boot (of a car) versus American English trunk. --Lambiam 07:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is it really that hard to read British spelling? Alansplodge (talk) 12:18, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried Conservapedia? Noting their policy on spelling. -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 20:53, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Our article on Noah Webster contains the statement "Webster viewed language as a means to control disruptive thoughts. His American Dictionary emphasized the virtues of social control over human passions and individualism." This seems a good reason to deploy multicultural orthography.

We also have an article on Ethnic Cleansing for those who demand racial purity in Wikipedian spelling. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 06:18, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Though I'm unclear how in practice teaching people to spell words like rumor, skunk, apothegm, donut, and gray mustache fiber was supposed to improve their manners. Card Zero (talk) 07:47, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 7

Egyptian personal names and gendered parentals

"Understanding Hieroglyphics",^[1] shot through with dubious claims, says "The terms that could be used for this designation were "born of" when using the mother's name and "made by" or "of his body" when using the father's name." (These are ms F31 and ir D4.) Interesting, but is it true? Temerarius (talk) 22:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC) Temerarius (talk) 22:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Wilson, Hilary (2019-07-25). Understanding Hieroglyphs. Michael O'Mara. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-78929-107-0.

The author, Hilary Wilson, appears to be well qualified in Egyptology and has written several books besides this one on the subject, issued by respected publishers: do you have some reason to doubt her expertise or honesty? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.83.137 (talk) 13:32, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't you judge some books better than others? It's one of those brash syntheses with misplaced self-confidence and inappropriate breadth. The claims that made me involuntarily laugh refer to no one. However, I quit after the first few chapters.

Temerarius (talk) 03:34, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I understated it, her "selected bibliography" pg 218 is just "here's some books I've read." No references. Light fare, and recent. On page 38 there's an etiology of Serapis that reads like the bunk about the etymology of Kangaroo. (A common myth is that it was a Guugu Yimithirr phrase for "I don't know".) That the author would give it a thought let alone pass it on reveals how shallow her respect for the ancients is. That they created a whole god all wrong because they misunderstood instead of because their Serapis served their needs. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth! It's the sign of a mind that can't contribute. And here's how the book jacket describes her qualifications: Hilary Wilson has been interested in Ancient Egypt since childhood. She trained as a mathematics teacher while at the University of Leicester, while at the same time taking courses on archaeology and mediaeval history. She has run courses in Egyptology at the University of Southampton She ran courses? Artful phrasing. Why doesn't it say she taught them? Not a good source. This is the kind of book where lines of fact checking go to die.

Temerarius (talk) 00:05, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And our page on Hilary Wilson needs work, was it written by her agent? Kinda promotiony.

Temerarius (talk) 00:32, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 8

French 'de le' --> 'du', and 'de les' --> 'des': an exception?

Quote: La mort de Le Corbusier m'a rempli d'une joie immense. Le Corbusier était une creature pitoyable travaillant en béton armé. (Salvador Dalí, 1969)

The first thing that I noticed was that it wasn't La mort du Corbusier .... Is this a standard exception for personal names and pseudonyms?

It doesn't seem to be the case for titles of books etc.

... la publication du "Pere Goriot" ^[1] - referring to the novel Le Père Goriot
Musique des pêcheurs de perles ^[2] - referring to the opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers)
many other examples.

Or was Dalí, being Spanish, speaking broken French? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:17, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ [1]
^ [2]

French Wikipedia uses "de Le Corbusier" near-universally. In fact, the article has a cite note which I believe encourages it when referring to the artist, with "du Corbusier" being reserved for referring to one of his achievements instead. Whether this is a common stylistic theme throughout all of French, however, is beyond me. GalacticShoe (talk) 06:00, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found over 100 uses of "de Le Corbusier" in Le Monde diplomatique: La ville La Roche, chef-d'œuvre de Le Corbusier; la chaise longue de Le Corbusier; moquer des lunettes de Le Corbusier; des groupies de Le Corbusier; le cadavre superexquis de Le Corbusier, although that last one might be the words of Dali. In fact it's from a letter written by Dali which goes:

Le cadavre exquis du Corbu, le Corbu du corbillard, le cadavre superexquis de Le Corbusier, le courbillon en ciment et acier du Corbusier, Corbu de l'arbousier, le cadavre exquis du Corbu. Dans la Cour d'Appel, le Corbu montre le cas. Il le montre, le cas. La Cour examine le cas du Corbu, le cas et le ça, le ça et le cas, le cas du Corbu recorbuyoté au corbillon du cas, du ça, du cas, du caca, du Corbu, la castration, l’hibernation, la lévitation, l’antigravitation dans la basse-cour de Le Corbusier…

with a use of du Corbusier mixed in there. (I guess "courbillon" is a play on tourbillon. I have no idea about "recorbuyoté au corbillon".) Card Zero (talk) 06:17, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Corbillon" is also a play on "court-bouillon", in which case "recorbuyoté au corbillon" sort of makes sense. Xuxl (talk) 13:23, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Googling the question (my search term was contraction de le du avec noms propres), I find lots of forum discussions on the topic (e.g. [4], [5]). The tenor is that names of persons are not contracted (Le Corbusier is an often cited example), the names of places are usually contracted (du Havre), as are articles in the titles of novels and such. Clearly, in the latter case, the article is perceived as just that, an ordinary article, whereas in the names of people it is perceived as an integral, unmodifiable part of that name. Place names are inbetween, it seems that most are contracted, but that is not universal. --Wrongfilter (talk) 07:47, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In English we similarly write "a New York Times headline"^[6] and not "a The New York Times headline". --Lambiam 15:25, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, it would be "a The The concert", not "a The concert". Card Zero (talk) 16:17, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you going to the The The concert?

I'm not sure about this comparison, Lambiam. The English example is about dropping the "the" after an article (either def or indef: "I read the NYT headline"; "I read it in a NYT article").

There's also the phenomenon of dropping the "the" but not from the object of the phrase. In TV speak, when referring to a new episode of some long-running show (e.g. The Chase) rather than the repeats they've been foisting on us for weeks, they'll say: "New The Chase", rather than "The new The Chase" or "The new Chase").

My question is about not so much dropping 2 words and replacing them with 1, but about transforming 2 into 1. Same end result, I know. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:44, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When "de Le Corbusier" is contracted to "du Corbusier", it means that the author treats "Le" as an ordinary article; one would expect this author also to prefer "Celui-ci est un autre Corbusier que le public connaît" ("This is another Corbusier than the public knows"). Note that, say, "This is not the Le Corbusier that the public is allowed to see" would normally be, in French, "Celui n'est pas le Le Corbusier que le public est autorisé à voir." The pseudonym derives from an Old French professional surname equivalent to "The Cobbler", and Dali's grammatical maltreatment is what one should expect from someone treating "corbusier" as if it is a common noun. Dali's use is not standard, doubtlessly so on purpose. I reacted, though, to the observation that it is common in French to perceive articles in the titles of novels and such as ordinary articles and gave what I think is an example of a similar case in English. --Lambiam 19:31, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's surrealist wordplay, very Daliesque... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:43, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would be "a concert", though. --Lambiam 17:57, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Once in 2005 I was pleased to see the phrase a Qaeda member. —Tamfang (talk) 23:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 11

Checkerboard or chessboard??

Some dictionaries say that either term is always acceptable. Other dictionaries say that checkerboard is always acceptable, but that chessboard is acceptable only when it has chess pieces on it. Which is correct?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:33, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Georgia guy: This is likely a WP:ENGVAR thing. In British English, it's more often called a draughts board or chessboard, depending on what it's being used for. Checkers and checkerboard, when used, are usually spelt chequers and chequerboard respectively. [7] [8] [9] . Bazza 7 (talk) 14:48, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Checkerboard" also refers more narrowly to the pattern itself. These are fine degrees of meaning, but if one used the term "checkerboard" to refer to a board being used to play chess, that visual pattern would be more directly emphasized in my mind. It would seem to be a deliberately literary choice of words, though. "Chessboard" is much more natural. Remsense ‥ 论 15:07, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Flat surfaces with this pattern are often used for camera calibration. The OpenCV docs seem to use either term indiscriminately: [10]. This tutorial uses "chess board" for an object that clearly does not have the appropriate shape and size to put chess pieces on: [11]. I do find that "checkerboard" is usually a closed compound written as a single word, but "chess board" is more likely to be an open compound with a space. If some of your dictionaries recommend against "chessboard" in at least some contexts, that could be just because they would write it as two words with a space. I wonder whether they would prefer "checkerboard" or "chess board" as an alternative to "chessboard." --Amble (talk) 15:29, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the technical heraldic descriptive language of Blazoning, an abstract pattern of squares in two alternating colors is known as "chequy", or a more modern alternative spelling is "checky". You wouldn't encounter the word in general use, but its meaning is exact in specifying a pure graphic pattern without reference to a board of any kind... AnonMoos (talk)

One thing to keep in mind is that the board is "checked" in terms of its pattern. The pattern would seem to make it easier to play checkers, while chess could probably be played fairly easily on an 8 x 8 grid with all the squares the same color. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note that chess and check, along with the derived terms checker, checkers, checked, etc., all come from Persian Shah, referring to the king in a game of chess. --Amble (talk) 16:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it shouldn't, but it tickles me considerably that every sense of the English word check is derived from the chess sense. Remsense ‥ 论 16:56, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One of those derived terms is exchequer, literally "chessboard", a checkered cloth for counting coins. Card Zero (talk) 08:16, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

another odd wördle.de answer (Sept 10 answer)

Hello friends, any idea what "fütze" means? Is it slang? Archaic? t.y. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 15:30, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Google Translate says it means "fuss". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:20, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In what language? No it doesn't?

I can't find it on wiktionary. Your closest guess (if it's germanic) might be related to wikt:Pfütze, unless like you say it's slang or a recent borrowing. SamuelRiv (talk) 16:32, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I specified German-to-English, and it translated it as "fuss". Try it! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:25, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you play around with Google Translate a bit more, including with incomplete words and phrases in other languages. That's not what it's literally trying to tell you.

Meanwhile, you can search Google for "fütze" in quotes and see how it's actually used in context. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:33, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just telling you what Google Translate says. Whether it's correct or not, the only "guessing" is by Google Translate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you're posting on the ref desk you should take some responsibility for the correctness of your response. Google Translate did not "guess" as to the meaning. It "guessed" that you made a typo. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:28, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I specified German-to-English. I put "fütze" under German and it gave me "fuss" under English. It also said "Did you mean: pfütze" (which apparently means "puddle"). I'm not going to claim that Google Translate is any sort of oracle. But don't yell at me for what Google Translate came up with. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:58, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly ask you again that you take responsibility for the reliability of answers you post on the Reference Desk. SamuelRiv (talk) 07:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Based on Google Ngrams and Google Books, I suspect that it's a possibly-archaic variant of Pfütze. GalacticShoe (talk) 16:29, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Almost all the apparent hits in the Google Books search are scanning errors, for unrelated words as different as "süeze", "-sätze", "kurze", "stütze" and others. There was only one hit I saw where it was genuinely written as an eye-dialect spelling of "Pfütze", and one that contained a family name that was actually "Fütze". No, it's not a word in German, neither dialectal nor archaic. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:07, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tracks for this database :( Thank you very much.70.67.193.176 (talk) 22:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Grimm´s dictionary lists "Futz", a term for vagina, presumably related to the current word "Fut". There may be a plural, "Fütze". It seems to be used in Alemannic areas. I have never heard it in 80 years, but I may speak to the wrong people. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 06:38, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In several parts of Germany, words beginning with 'Pf' are often pronounced without the initial 'P'. 'Pfütze' is actually given as one of the examples for this by the Leibniz Institute for German Language. --Morinox (talk) 13:27, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So Future Perfect at Sunrise's signature (see above) is unfortunate, to say the least! In the same vein, a recent "CAPTCHA" request asked me to type "jakeswank". How are the words selected? 2A00:23C8:57AD:AE00:51B7:8F58:C3B2:22E9 (talk) 13:57, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

September 12

[g838-1] Wilson, Hilary (2019-07-25). Understanding Hieroglyphs. Michael O'Mara. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-78929-107-0.

[2] [1]

[3] [2]

[1]

[1]

[2]