LINGUIST List 6.539

Tue 11 Apr 1995

Qs: Vietnamese, Use of "many a...", Official lg, Tati & Talysh

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1. "Robert Port", Vietnamese tones in ascii?
2. cxyb, THe use of "many a..."
3. A. Stenzel, Official lg/USA
4. , Tati & Talysh

This brief article (suspiciously dated Apr 1) suggests that the
letters used to mark tone in Vietnamese as written in ascii calls for
frequent use of the sequence `sex'. Is this for real? How ARE tones
written in keyboard Vietnamese?

)From Edupage 4/4/95:

) TOO MUCH "SEX" SPOILS VIETNAM ONLINE TEST
) A test of Vietnam Prodigy was suspended because anti-smut software was
) overloaded, triggered too often by repeated use of the word "sex." Because
) tonal marks required by the Vietnamese language are not correctly shown on
) the computer screen, Vietnamese users rely on Roman letters to indicate
) those marks, causing the letters "sex" to show up in about 85% of all
) messages. (Agence France-Presse 4/1/95)

 Bob Port
 Linguistics/ Comp Sci/ Cog Sci
 Indiana University
 Bloomington, IN

List members,

I have a question about the peculiar use of a singular after "many".
Is it accptable to use "many" in the following example, and, if so,
what's the justification for that?

 - He helped me with many a difficult problem

Thank you in advance,

Kevin McDade
McGill University

Hi out there,

recently, I had an argument with an acquaintance. I am quite sure
that he was wrong, but I do not have the time to go into the matter
in detail, so I am soliciting the help of the net.

The subject matter was an alledged poll or ballot in the USA by the
end of the last century. This person claims that there has been
a poll concerning the official lg of the USA, and that in this poll
(or Congress vote, he wasn't sure), English won over German by
a few votes. My merory, though dim, tells me that this is a rumour
created by Nazi propaganda in the Third Reich which has no
relation to reality whatsoever, and that the US does not have an
official lg (although there are attempts in some states to lodge
such legislation). Am I right, and if so, are there books or
articles available that document this Nazi propaganda trick?

I may note that this story keeps recurring in Germany, it appears to
have found its way into people's heads sixty years ago.

Please reply to me directly (fs3a505rrz.uni-hamburg.de), I will
post a summary of sorts if I find enough material.

Thanks
Achim Stenzel
Universitaet Hamburg

I would be very grateful if someone could provide me with
some information (mostly: word order in the NP) about two
Indo-Iranian languages that are also spoken in the Caucasus
region (i.e. in geographical Europe): Tati and Talysh.

Many thanks in advance.


Jan Rijkhoff, Fachgruppe Sprachwissenschaft, Universitaet Konstanz
 Postfach 5560, D-78434 Konstanz, Germany
 phone: +49.7531.882680
 e-mail: Jan.Rijkhoffuni-konstanz.de