[Wikipedia-l] Pronunciation guides (Was Re: Oliver is Lir II [...])

Mon Nov 25 19:34:27 UTC 2002

Lars Aronsson wrote:

>I think the problem is that Lir is young and has more energy to
>question authority, than patience to listen before he speaks.  This
>makes it hard for him to engage in a dialogue.  He questions his
>peers, with whom he should cooperate, instead of knowing his enemies
>and where he should direct his energy.  Been there, done that, got the
>T-shirt.  I think his homepage indicated he was 21.  I'm 36.  I have
>no idea how old or young or energetic or lazy everybody else is.  I'm
>lazy enough, not to bother very much in all the detail.  
>
The issue of using diacritical marks is not about Lir.  Lir may have 
been the one to raise the matter, but that does not alter the objective 
question of diacriticals.  At 59 I'm much lazier than a 36-year old kid. 
 I know that people with a poor credibility occasionally make worth 
while contributions, and that highly respected people are not immune 
from stupidity.

If anything, the debate so far has shown that we are far from unanimous 
in our opinions about how non-English names should be treated.  A rule 
that "the English Wikipedia is in English" seems trivial at first 
glance.  It works well as long as we stick to common nouns and concepts 
of English language origin.  There's a whole non-English speaking world 
out there with many interesting ideas that are worth incorporating into 
Wikipedia.  A dictionary is about words; an encyclopedia is about ideas, 
and, in the absence of direct neural interfaces, an encyclopedia needs 
the words to communicate its ideas.  The diacritics of another language 
enhance communication, and often are the distinguishing feature between 
dissimilar words.  The poetics of another language can suffer badly in 
translation, yet such a small concession as allowing foreign words to be 
fully accented is worth doing if it enhances the understanding of the 
other culture.  Yes, I know that Spanish considers "n" and "ñ" to be 
separate letters which follow each other in alphabetical order, and that 
Swedish considers "a" and "å" to be separate letters with the latter put 
in a group of special letters at the end of the alphabet.  I would never 
propose that we adopt the hodge-podge of aphabetical orders from other 
languages.  Algorithms can be established to link these letters to their 
unaccented counterparts.  The French certainly have no trouble treating 
"e", "è", "é" and "ê" as the same letter for alphabetical purposes, and 
that's just fine for English.  It also allows for users who just don't 
know what the correct accent is in a given circumstance including native 
speakers.  What I really oppose is having English as the foundation for 
a modern Tower of Babel.

>But I know
>that after Lir we will still have the same problem with the next of
>the same kind. So what is our conclusion, and what tools will we have
>prepared for the next time this happens?
>
Indeed we will!  I very strongly agree that we should have objective 
procedures for dealing with these.  Those procedures should help us not 
only to deal with "guilty" parties, but also safeguard users from being 
overwhelmed by the mob instinct..

Eclecticology