Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 March 22

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March 22

Pronounciation: Pfizer

There is a company called 'Pfizer'; how does I pronounce 'Pfizer'? I cannot interpret phonetic notation. ----Seans Potato Business 11:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Like "Fie-zer". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Is that f-eye-zer or f-ee-zer? ----Seans Potato Business 12:49, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The first syllable rhymes with spy. Deor (talk) 13:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Or rye bread. Or like bow-tie. Or a shy person. Or girl and a guy. A walk in the sky. I like apple pie. This, I would not lie. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

As in tizer if you are familiar with that.87.102.16.238 (talk) 16:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be great if IPA was taught in high school?

Yep. Or even elementary school. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 15:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it would be great if linguistics was taught before the college-level! – ishwar  (speak) 19:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Theories of language acquisition (which I need not link to in this group of contributors) indicate that complex rules of linguistics are learned prior to reading and writing, even prior to speaking. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 00:57, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Those tiny tots might know the rules, but I doubt any of them would know they know the rules. This is true for most things in life. Then there are those, like me, who think they know stuff, but actually don't. And it gets worse. (To Donald Rumsfeld, wherever you are: Have you got time to drop in for a minute and explain this to us?) -- JackofOz (talk) 01:11, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

How is it pronounced in German? I once heard that the <pf> is pronounced as a very strong [pf]. --Kjoonlee 10:03, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I've never heard the word pronounced in Germany, but from the spelling I'd predict [ˈ(p)fiːtsɐ]. <pf> is indeed [pf] in German (I don't know about "very strong"; it's no stronger than any other consonant in German), but speakers in the northern half of Germany at least tend to reduce it to [f] at the beginning of a word. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 10:26, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Angr is almost right but the "i" is actually short. I don't know if the pronounciation in northern Germany is different in this case, but in Southern Germany and in Austria the "p" is pronounced, so I'd say it's [ˈpfitsɐ]. (My mother tongue is German.) --Eintragung ins Nichts (talk) 14:02, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction. The spelling is somewhat ambiguous; if it were either "Pfiezer" or "Pfitzer" the vowel length would have been clear. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 18:23, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Original Languages

What are the original languages of the world. What I mean is languages that are not influenced, or when they were created were not influenced, by another language. I think Chinese and Mayan are two, but I don't know any others.

See origin of language, proto-language, and doubtless many other relevant articles. Modern Chinese descends from Proto-Sino-Tibetan (or possibly even Proto-Indo-European), while modern Mayan languages developed from Proto-Mayan. Algebraist 17:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Mapudungun isn't related to any other language, neither is the Silbo Gomero language as far as i know.Carritotito (talk) 04:09, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

There are many language isolates. Japanese might not be related to anything but it has certainly been influenced by many other languages. Lack of relationship says nothing about the antiquity of the language; this question could be impossible to answer, because even Chinese and Mayan are influenced by other languages, and have changed significantly. In the case of Chinese, it is odd that we call everything in the past 5000 years (or whatever) "Chinese" when the language and the culture have changed just as much as every other language and culture over the same time period. The links Algebraist gave are a good start, but the "original languages", whatever they were, could not have included Chinese or Mayan. Adam Bishop (talk) 05:44, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Note that "language isolate" only means a language with no known kin. It may well be that all languages now spoken have a common ancestor, but the shape of the tree cannot (at least by current methods) be determined beyond a few thousand years, because genuine signs of kinship – shared inherited features – are eventually outnumbered by chance resemblances. Mapudungun and Gomeran (the lost spoken language of which Silbo is/was an encoding) likely had close relatives that disappeared by absorption of their speakers into another language-community, just as the cousins of Basque (Iberian and Aquitanian) vanished in the Roman Empire — the last of what was likely a large number of small language families superseded in the expansion of the group that we now call Indo-European. —Tamfang (talk) 02:47, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the 13th Century King Frederick II of Germany tried to discover the Original Language by "bidding foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash (infants raised from birth this way), but in no wise to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which had been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments." [[1]] Adambrowne666 (talk) 02:28, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

And don't forget the similar experiment by an Egyptian pharaoh, which probably suggested the idea to Frederick. Deor (talk) 02:52, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Also tried by James V of Scotland. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:06, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Stephen Pinker touches on this subject in The Language Instinct with regards to some Central American deaf children, but I can't remember the details. --Sean 15:02, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

You're probably thinking of the origin of Nicaraguan Sign Language. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 15:12, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

female actor

The Reese Witherspoon article featured today (22 March 2008) refers to Witherspoon as an actress. It is increasingly common to refer to females as actors in line with the tendency to eliminate female human Is reference nouns in English: Dutchwoman, poetess, hostess, etc. Is there anything in Wikipedia style guides on this point? mnewmanqc (talk) 18:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Gender-neutral_language and Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language. It says to "consider" it, a very slight nudge in that direction. --Milkbreath (talk) 18:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes; I notice that although she is called an "actress", not an "actor", the categories she's in include Category:American film actors, Category:American television actors, and Category:Tennessee actors. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 22:34, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe she should have been competing with Philip, Terrence, Heath, Joaquin and David for the "Best Actor" Oscar in 2005. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:18, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

The Screen Actors Guild Award is given to "Best Male Actor" and "Best Female Actor". Corvus cornix_talk 04:40, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Philip and Terrence were up for best Oscar??? —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 10:40, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Given all that, I'll make a change to actor in the article, and refer to this section. mnewmanqc (talk) 16:40, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Didn't think Reference Desk has become a place for editorial discussions about Wikipedia articles. My view is that editors on each article are free to use whatever they like. "Female actor" is political correctness gone (slightly) overboard. Why don't we change to the Female Baron Thatcher, too? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:03, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Lit or lighted?

I keep hearing what I think are inappropriate uses of lit and lighted. "The path through the forest was lighted by candles." or "The musical featured a colorful lighted background." or "Her lantern lighted the way down the dark staircase." or "Joe lighted every candle on the cake" Is that proper usage? It kind of scrapes my ears. What is the proper usage for lit and lighted? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:34, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/light#Verb has both lit and lighted as simple past tense / past participle of light. To my ears, lit seems natural, but others will disagree. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:41, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Seeing it is 9:00AM Down Under, JackofOz will be delit to add something about OzLighted.

What, we have no (better known as SFA) link on the great man ?  :) --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 22:02, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately I do not exist in my own right. My sole claim to being is as a WP user, and you have to put "[[User:" before my name and "]]" after, to spirit me into existence.

As for lit and lighted, my rough hunch is that if you're talking about setting something on fire, such as a piece of paper, you'd use lit; but if you're talking about casting light on something, such as a forest path at night time, you'd use lighted. But then, we talk of decorations etc as being "all lit up", not "all lighted up". Maybe we should ask the Easter bunny.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 00:12, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Took VS Taken

Similar to the question above me, when do you use took, or taken? I hate it when people say tooken, but i cant figure out if they should say took or taken instead.--Xtothe3rd (talk) 21:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take#Verb has for take (verb) as simple past took, as the past participle taken. "Tooken" (unless you mean "token") I have never heard. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

PS: As I can´t think of a case (no pun intended) where one could mix up the two tenses, maybe you could give a couple of examples ? --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I have heard "tooken". As in: "The money was tooken without the proper permission." ... "This picture was tooken during our honeymoon." Bad English, but I certainly have heard the likes of this. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:05, 22 March 2008 (UTC))

Joseph (and X³): I can´t work out from your page in which English speaking area you reside. As you (Joseph) seem to use a middle name, I guess it is the US of A. Can I then assume that "tooken" as a past participle is used somewhere in the US ?

If so, it may be a local colloquialism / dialect / slang or social jargon which may be totally acceptable in a particular region or social / cultural stratum.

There is no reason why spoken English (or any language X) should follow the precise rules of the written form which is formalised for a wider area. As you say "I have heard..." it may be assumed that you are, indeed, quoting oral statements. And, as such, they may be valid in the specific location / group.

It must remain an aspect of "freedom of speech" to phrase something how you want it and not how the book of rules prescribes. We might as well tell the late James Joyce to "tidy up" his language in Finnegans Wake. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 00:23, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I am in the USA. And I only hear it from people who speak improper English, that's all. But, I have heard it ... unfortunately. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:28, 23 March 2008 (UTC))

I knew a couple of people once who called chickens "begockers" (spelling invented just now). I understood the first time I heard it, but I'm good at that sort of thing. --Milkbreath (talk) 01:27, 23 March 2008 (UTC)