Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 November 16

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 16

Who can read the (Chinese?) writing on this coin

Here's a mystery coin, both sides pictured, I'd like to know what it is. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:14, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

The coin on the right-hand side has four Chinese characters on it: 光緒通寶 (pinyin: guāngxù tōngbǎo), which means "coins issued during the reign of Guangxu". Cheers.--K.C. Tang 01:45, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

It's just one coin. The left picture is the other side. (I pasted 2 separate images together.) --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 03:17, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

That one contains Manchu letters, not Chinese characters. They represent the name of the mint. I'm not familiar with the alphabet, but you can match the letters here.--K.C. Tang 04:15, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Linguistic term needed

What is it called when a word's meaning shifts to something in a similar location? I.e. the word 'stomach' orginally meant "mouth" in Greek, then "throat," then finally "Stomach." I heard the word metronym but I don't think it's the correct term. 130.126.67.144 09:29, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

• See semantic change. The term metonym is sometimes used, without the -r-. The word metronym would mean the same as matronymic: name based on mother's name. Bessel Dekker 13:09, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
  • As a coined term, metronym could also be the name of a unit of measure ("Inch, pound, centimeter, and kilogram are all metronyms.") —Angr 13:39, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
    • All depends on wheher it's spelled with an eta or an epsilon! AnonMoos (talk) 05:00, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
    • All right, but that looks like taking a word form that has a well-established meaning and attempting to give it another meaning altogether. Similarly, we might try to decide that from now on, patronym shall be the name of a shepherd. I wonder whether this would be an improvement of the English (or even the Greek) language. Bessel Dekker (talk) 17:25, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

looking for the word that means: "to black out certain information in a report or transcript"

It sounds like "ENDACTED: but I can't think of the word exactly. As in ... "The report was released by the government but certain names were ENDACTED"

Redacted? —Angr 17:03, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

That's it. - Eron^Talk 17:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

FYI, searching for "report names were" says "redacted" in the first page of results. --Sean 15:25, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Japanese album title

Can anyone translate (or transliterate) this? It's the title of an album by the Japanese band Noirouze.

病ヨリノ使者

-- Malcolm Starkey (talk) 18:41, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Er, "messenger from sickness", I guess? Maybe it's a pun on 闇よりの使者 ("messenger from the darkness" -- not that I know what that means, but it sounds more like something someone might say). They both romanize to "yami yori no shisha". By the way, "noirouze" means "neurosis" (from German "Neurose", I think). -- BenRG (talk) 20:42, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that, BenRG. Malcolm Starkey (talk) 09:55, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

When romanized 病ヨリノ使者, it should be yamai yori no shisha. Yami reading is only possible when with other kanji before it and み behind it. Like 気病み, 目病み. Just 病 is read only as yamai. Translation is right as User BenRG wrote above. But I think it's not a pun.Oda Mari (talk) 17:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)