Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 March 15

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.

March 15

Piz Daint

What is the approximate pronunciation (I can't read IPA) of this Swiss mountain, please? 129.215.230.248 (talk) 16:10, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Like "Pits Dye-nt".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:05, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Rhymes with "eats pint" might be more helpful. The English pits has a short (lax) vowel, /ɪ/, while Piz would sound more like "Pete's" to an English speaker. μηδείς (talk) 20:09, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.230.130 (talk) 10:35, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Many many pizzes. No sound sample, for copyright reasons, but Franz Hohler's (where-I-live) famous "Totemügerli" (a spooky story in Bernese gibberish, yet one is still able to get more than just the gist of it) has a cousin in Romansh gibberish titled "Il malur da la fuorcla" which includes the line "e tumbettan a bassa a schnestra e vadrets il Piz Ot, il Piz Nair, il Piz Blanc, il Piz Grond - e tuota la pizzeria". Completely irrelevant. Posted it anyway. ---Sluzzelin talk 02:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately there is no sound sample for that particular mountain on Commons, but there is for many others mountains in the Engiadine. Check out these two, which both have similar sounds: and . --Terfili (talk) 12:26, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Why did the hard "T" suddenly start being pronounced in neanderthal?

I know pronouncing neanderthal with a hard "T" may be more "correct", since they come from the "Neandertal" valley, and if spelled "th", it would take a hard "T", but I was wondering if anyone knows how it suddenly developed, at least in American English, what had always and consistently been pronounce as a normal "th" (as in "think") suddenly started being pronounced as a hard "T", starting about 10 years ago and ever more so since then. No one in the U.S. for decades ever pronounced it other than with a th, and I've even seen lately the spelling neandertal. Was there some event that caused this, some person who decided to make it their mission to "correct" this?--74.101.125.5 (talk) 17:29, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Are you sure "nobody" pronounced it like this earlier? From experience, I'd warn against over-estimating the reliability of one's own assessment of what is or isn't common in one's speech community. Just because you became aware of the [t] pronunciation "about 10 years ago" doesn't mean it didn't exist earlier. For what it's worth, all the English dictionaries I have on my shelf (and most of them are significantly older than ten years, though most of them are more British- than American-based) list the [t] pronunciation exclusively. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:39, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

• Tal itself means valley, the term means "Valley of the Neander River". Thal is just an archaic spelling, and it was still pronounced "tal" even though spelt "thal". As people have heard the Neandertal pronunciation, they have picked up on the foreignism. See hyperforeignism for what happens when that process goes too far. I myself say nee-æn-dər-thal as I was taught in childhood, and Nay-ahn-der-tahl (the German pronunciation) in free variation. μηδείς (talk) 17:45, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

The valley was named for Joachim Neander; its river is the Düssel. —Tamfang (talk) 02:16, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's spelt Duessel, but it's pronounced Neander. μηδείς (talk) 16:27, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm stopping this sketch, it's getting too silly. —Tamfang (talk) 05:42, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

(EC)I don't know of any particular 'events' which caused the shift (but I can guess that it was caused by listening to academics on TV), but the fact of the matter is the word is German, which does not have a 'th' sound. I have heard English people pronouncing it as 'ni-and-er-thol' and also 'ni-and-er-tal'. Neither are actually correct, as it should be /nɛanderta:l/, or something like that. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 17:51, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

It's funny when you hear cockneys speaking about them, because it always sounds like 'Knee and the toe' :) KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 17:58, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there's a lot of variation on both sides of the pond. The OED has Brit. /nɪˈandətɑːl/ , /nɪˈandəθəl/ , U.S. /niˈændərˌθɔl/ , /niˈændərˌθɑl/ , /niˈændərˌtɔl/ , /niˈændərˌtɑl/" (and that covers only the most common variations). Dbfirs 18:19, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Among Americans, at least, there has been a very widespread effort to diminish the extent to which stolen see James Nicoll's famous aphorism on English and vocabulary foreign words and terms have been anglicized. The scientific community has been in the forefront of this, so I'm not surprised that the loss of the bogus "th" sound has been fairly quick (and longer than ten years ago, in the circles in which I travel). --Orange Mike | Talk 04:02, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

• Of interesting note, the -tal or -thal in "Neandert(h)al" is etymologically related to the word "dollar", see Thaler, and Dollar#History. Thus we have three pronounciations (-th-, -t-, and -d-) showing up in English usage from the same original word meaning "valley". --Jayron32 05:21, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Jayron32 -- The English cognate is "dale", a little archaic, but still seen in placenames, and until recently in phrases like "over hill and dale"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:38, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

• "Me no like TH sound. It hard to say. Me make T sound now." StuRat (talk) 06:20, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I have likewise noticed the phenomenon raised by the OP. It might just be an increased awareness of correct pronunciation, thanks to televised programs about science. Another example would be Halley's Comet, which was always pronounced Haley's in my youth, but the return of the comet in the 1980s seemed to spawn a change in the pronunciation the rhyme with Halle (Berry). Further back, there is the matter of Attila the Hun, which once tended to rhyme with vanilla, but over time the emphasis on the initial A has become (somewhat) more prevalent. Or Mt. Everest, supposedly once pronounced with an initial long E, but nowadays with an initial short E. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:25, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Halley's was traditionally often pronounced with [æ] until the band Bill Haley & His Comets confused things in the 1950s... AnonMoos (talk) 06:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I always pronounce it with [æ], but I have read that Halley himself said it like "Hawley". Maybe we're all wrong. (Side note: I've never heard anyone refer to Mt //Eev-rəst//, but that's how its eponym called himself.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:45, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Peru national football team

Today's featured article is on the Peru national football team.

Is there really any linguistic variety of English in which that is a natural-sounding phrase? Here we have a noun used appositively ("Peru") coming before an unambiguous adjective ("national"). I never learned English order of modifiers from books, so I can't quote the rule that makes that wrong, but I can say that I find it jarring as a native speaker.

This seems to be the common convention on Wikipedia for sports teams; I am not sure why, as I am almost sure that almost all other English media would call them the Peruvian national [football|soccer] team. This is of course not really the right venue to argue for changing that convention, nor do I have time, energy, or interest to wade into that probably fruitless battle. But I'm curious whether there's anywhere but WP where this wouldn't sound just plain weird. --Trovatore (talk) 18:54, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

This is just my speculating wildly, but methinks that wikipedia often uses such quaint terminology as a catch-all means to avoid offending certain people. While no reasonable man would ever object to Peruvian, some actually may to Taiwainese, as opposed to Taiwan, Republic of China, or even Chinese Taipei.

As a side note: The New York Times refers to the parliament in Turkey as the "Turk parliament" because (according to their style guide, at least) Turkish is an ethnicity, not a nationality. By that same token, wikipedia has articles relating to barriers, as opposed to fences or walls.

Pine (talk) 20:50, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Then the NYT style guide is a ass. To me it makes more sense the other way ’round. —Tamfang (talk) 05:45, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm a non-native speaker, but on Wikipedia I'm mostly into articles related to football, particularly national team-level football (as opposed to club-level football).

To me, titles like this read as the "Peru" national team; the national team that goes by the name "Peru" - an easiest and least ambiguous way to indicate which national team the article is about. It allows distinguishing "Ireland" from "Republic of Ireland", "Palestine" from "Mandatory Palestine", or "Congo" from "DR Congo", and saves the trouble of building adjectival forms from "Turks and Caicos Islands", "São Tomé and Príncipe" or "Central African Republic".

For some of those, the format "national team of <name>" could also be an option. But for "Tahiti", neither "Tahitian national team" nor "National team of Tahiti" would be a fine enough option, because, confusingly, the team known with that name actually represents the entire French Polynesia and not just the island of Tahiti.

That's my opinion. Maybe some discussions on the topic do exist somewhere in the archives of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football or somewhere else. --Theurgist (talk) 21:38, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

If "Tahiti" is the actual name of the team, then I'd suggest parenthetical disambiguation: Tahiti (association football team) or some such.

The reasons you and Pine have offered are interesting, and thanks for those. I still think it's a very unnatural expression in English. Does anyone have any comment on that, from a language standpoint rather than a Wikipedia-practice one? --Trovatore (talk) 22:41, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

On a related note, see a move discussion of 2010 (the "political entries" part there should probably read "political entities"). --Theurgist (talk) 13:15, 18 March 2015 (UTC)