Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 March 26

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March 26

The Giver

Hi I was just wondering what view Lois Lowry's the Giver was written from (3rd person? 1st person?)50.132.42.1 (talk) 02:49, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

You can read the first few pages at Google Books, which should make it pretty clear. Lesgles (talk) 03:16, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

You can also see Narration#Narrative point of view if you're having trouble with the distinction. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 03:43, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Tazer

I know that 'Tazer' is a brand name for tasers that are used by law enforcement, but I always thought that the verb was 'to tase', rather than 'to taser'. This BBC article, however, seems to disagree. Which is correct? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 08:43, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

My UK dictionary says that "taser" is the verb form. Tase is a back-formation based on the assumption that a Taser is "a thing that tases" - in fact the word is an acronym: "Thomas A. Swift's electric rifle". Of course, "correctness" is a slippery concept in language, especially when dealing with neologisms. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:52, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

And keep in mind that Tom Swift, as well as his electric rifle, are fictional.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Resolved

Other sources checked via onelook.com give the verb form as follows:

• Oxford (See note below): taser or tase
• American Heritage Dictionary: tase, also taze
• Collins Dictionary (American English): tase, also Tase
• Collins Dictionary (British English): Taser (sometimes taser)
• Cambridge Dictionary: no verb form
• Macmillan Dictionary: no verb form

Note: By Oxford I mean whatever dictionary the www.oxforddictionaries.com web site gives you; they don't make clear which of their many print dictionaries it corresponds to. It certainly isn't the full OED. Oxford and Macmillan, like Collins, have separate American and British dictionary listings on their web site, but Collins is the only one of the three that gives different verb forms in American and British use.

--65.94.50.15 (talk) 04:21, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

The big OED (Third Edition) in its update of 2008 has "Taser" for the verb, and also the shortened or back-formation "Tase". It doesn't recognise the "z" spellings, but it comments: "also with lower case initial". Dbfirs 08:37, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

There's one more thing to say, which is that since "Taser" is a trademark, the trademark user is required to take the point of view that it must be used only in the way they use it when designating their product. So if you were writing for publication and used any version of the word as a verb—or if you spelled it with a Z, or with a lower-case T, or used the word to include a similar weapon of another brand—then in any of these cases they might well send you a letter complaining about your "abuse" of their trademark. In fact, many companies insist that their trademark can only be used as an adjective, not a noun. They'd particularly make a fuss about it if you were actually in a related business. However, they can't police unpublished uses, and the general public has a habit of ignoring such instructions from trademark holders. See also trademark genericization. --65.94.50.15 (talk) 19:39, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I can agree with that, however, I can add to it that as 'Tazer' (or whichever spelling you want to use) is a proper noun or just a noun, its adjectival use would be called an attributive noun, so any letter complaining that it can only be used as an adjective would be technically not usable in court. It would be like saying it could only be used as a cheese sandwich. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 20:26, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Also the examples listed at OED for tase/taser as a verb are from New York Times, Denver Post, Edmonton Sun, Metro, a book from Humana Press, and a book from Verso Books and date back to 1976. So even regular publishers sometimes feel free to ignore trademark-holders' instructions about allowed use. Cf. Google (verb) (not yet in OED in that sense). Abecedare (talk) 20:46, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

"Google" was added to the OED (Third edition) in March 2006, with cites from 1998 onwards, including two using lower-case "google". Dbfirs 08:28, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

You are right, of course. Don't know why I didn't see the entry when I looked last time. Abecedare (talk) 19:59, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

many companies insist that their trademark can only be used as an adjective, not a noun. Jeez, they're still emitting this claptrap? I heard of this a decade or so ago, but I thought it had died out. But no, confidently pronounced syntactic ignorance and hypocrisy never die! (Clicking on that link highly recommended.) -- Hoary (talk) 01:15, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Trademark owners may dislike people using their trademarks in ways that may lead them to eventually become generic terms (and thus potentially lose their distinctiveness and "trademarkability"), but for them to call this "abuse" is laughable. It certainly isn't unlawful in any way, so no one is under an obligation to follow their advice. From what I understand, one would only be breaching another's trademark if one applied that trademark or a confusingly similar one to the goods or services in respect of which the trademark is registered (for example, calling your hamburger shop "McRonald's"), or used the trademark in a way that falsely suggested a connection between the trademark owner's goods or services and yours (for example, selling unauthorized Taylor Swift T-shirts, assuming "Taylor Swift" has been registered as a trademark). — SMUconlaw (talk) 18:56, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that trademark owners publicly protest against blurring of trademarks even when they don't truly care, so that later it cannot be argued that they had let the trademark lapse through a "failure to protect". See laches and this Forbes article. The actual law in the area, of course, is more complex and nuanced but large companies often take the safe-course of sending out cease-and-desist letters automatically for each possible infringement, no matter how minor, tangential, or arguable. It's a legal strategy rather than a emotional response to disliking such use. Abecedare (talk) 19:59, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Gender-specific language

Do we know of any human society where males and females speak different languages, or different dialects of the same language? If I learn Chinese from a Chinese woman, for example, I'd probably have no trouble at all talking to Chinese men. Is there any society where this is not true, and I'd have to learn the language twice? --98.232.12.250 (talk) 08:50, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I seem to remember that some Australian Aborigine languages do have different 'languages' for male and female, but, of course, they understand both. I read this about 25 years ago, so I am not clear on which languages they are. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 09:33, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Sumerian had two distinct forms, one of which seems to have been primarily used by women. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:53, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

See Gender differences in spoken Japanese for another example, though I don't think the variations could be said to constitute different dialects. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:56, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Some examples (including Sumerian) are given in our article on gender role in language too, but that article probably needs quite a bit of work ("Among the Kaffir of South Africa ...") ---Sluzzelin talk 09:57, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Some more examples, mostly historical, are given in our Language and gender article (Language and gender#Gender-specific vocabulary).--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 10:23, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

A really interesting case, though not quite what you're looking for, is the Tucano people, who practice what's called linguistic exogamy. The incest taboo is carried over into language identity so that men can't marry women who speak the same language. That's the idea, anyway. Tocano people are generally multilingual and there are ways of using ancestry to determine which one language a person is categorized as speaking. The differences between these languages are probably not very significant, though, and might otherwise be considered separate dialects were there not so much importance ascribed to their differences. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:35, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

• One phenomenon is avoidance speech where one doesn't use normal terms in the presence of certain relatives (often mothers-in-law) and uses a special, limited vocabulary. There are also examples such as the Lakota language and other Siouan languages that have Men's v Women's Speech. There are also phonetic differences that are skewed by gender, such as dropping of fnal -s in Mexican Spanish, which is associated with men, and creaky voice which is found in young female urban English speakers according to this study. There are no examples where the men and women actually speak fully different languages (outside the sort of multilingualism Aeusoes1 mentions) as an ongoing phenomenon under normal social circumstances.

μηδείς (talk) 19:20, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

See "Láadan".—Wavelength (talk) 01:58, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Fashionese is indecipherable to most English-speaking males, with few exceptions. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:48, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Can someone generate IPA pronunciation guide for me?

I'd like to add a pronunciation guide to the Grodziskie article for how to say the name. IPA mystifies me, so I'm not the best person to take a stab at it. It's a Polish word, and sounds like grew-JISK-yuh, with some extra rolling of the R. here is a youtube video with the speaker saying the word at the 1:45 mark. Thank you for any help you can provide. Neil916 (Talk) 18:07, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

See Help:IPA for Polish.—Wavelength (talk) 18:42, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

The beer is named after the town of Grodzisk Wielkopolski. In our article on the town, we give the IPA for the first part of that name as /ˈɡrɔd͡ʑisk/. Based on Help:IPA for Polish, I believe that the Polish pronunciation of the beer's name would be /ɡrɔ'd͡ʑiskʲɛ/. Marco polo (talk) 18:51, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you @Marco polo:, that is helpful. Neil916 (Talk) 19:06, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Confirmed, the IPA given above looks good. If I had to do pronunciation respelling in English, it would look more like: graw-JIS-kyeh, but I wouldn't use it in a Wikipedia article. — Kpalion^(talk) 14:37, 30 March 2015 (UTC)