Talk:Lower Sava Valley

Sava Valley?

Posavje can't be translated as Sava Valley. Name in Slovenian language is description for the area on both sides of Sava River. Sava Valley is in Slovenian language Dolina Save.

This is a common misunderstanding among Slovenians. Riversheds (areas on both sides of a river) are typically referred to as valleys in English; the term is not limited to a narrow valley (gorge, etc.) For example, the Mississippi Valley is about 160 km wide, the Nile Valley (Sln. Ponilje) is 25 km wide at Cairo, etc. The Slovenian pattern Po-XXX-je = XXX Valley. Other examples: Podonavje = the Danube Valley, Povardarje = the Vardar Valley, Porenje = the Rhine Valley, Povolžje = the Volga Valley, Polabje = the Elbe Valley, etc.. Doremo (talk) 10:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I've just spotted this discussion. If this is the case, how does one discern in English between Zasavje and Posavje then? What's the "correct" translation? Sava Valley seems too broad to me for Posavje; perhaps it would be better to use Lower Sava Valley for Posavje and Central Sava Valley for Zasavje. Sava Valley seems more appropriate as a translation of Posavina. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 09:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I prefer Spodnje Posavje ‘Lower Sava Valley’, Zasavje ‘Central Sava Valley’, Zgornje Posavje ‘Upper Sava Valley’. It's natural and transparent in English, and generally corresponds to what the Slovenians indicate by these expressions (although I've heard some animated disagreements among Slovenians on where Zasavje starts and ends). Of course, all this is also from a Slovenian perspective (but I'm only commenting on Slo-Eng pairs); logically, Posavje should run all the way to Serbia, and Spodnje Posavje ought to include Belgrade, but that's not how Slovenians generally use the terms (one also finds hrvaško Posavje, bosansko Posavje, etc. in Slovenian).

I agree that Posavje ‘Sava Valley’ is a problem in this article because the article is restricted to the lower course of the Sava, and so I will change it to Lower Sava Valley as suggested. Thank you for pointing this out. Linguistically, the Slovenian use of Posavje to refer to only the lower part of the river is totum pro parte synecdoche (like referring to the US as America). However, at least historically, Posavje can also refer to the entire course of the river—for example, "Pravimo Posavje za kraje ob Savi" (Novice gospodarske, obrtniške in narodne, 1858), Ljubljansko Posavje v ljudski revoluciji (book title, 1985)—and, obviously, Zgornje Posavje must be part of "big" Posavje. So I would conclude:

Posávje -a n. 1. the Lower Sava Valley, 2. the Sava Valley

Doremo (talk) 21:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, term Lower Sava Valley applies to a segment of the river significantly east of Zagreb (source), so this article should be renamed. I agree that the discussed section is lower course of Sava - but only the lower course of Sava in Slovenia - and that is actually upper Sava valley when considering Sava River as a whole. Therefore the title is not justified as it is now and potentially misleading to readers.--Tomobe03 (talk) 12:18, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was Note moved - (non-admin closure) Discussion has been on-going for a while now. Very little to state a support for move. Wesley☀Mouse 18:49, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

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Lower Sava Valley → Posavje – Present title "Lower Sava Valley" is highly misleading no matter how literal translation it may be. Reliable English-language sources actually apply the term to areas significantly downstream from this particular area: either in vicinity of Slavonski Brod (source) or as far downstream as Belgrade (source), which is also very logical hence misleading nature of the present title. If the present title is used in Slovenia, it should be noted by the article, but not in its title. As far as proposed title is concerned, I see no problem with using of native name - it is after all a geographical term not much unlike Posavina. Tomobe03 (talk) 22:10, 2 June 2012 (UTC) Oppose - I agree that "Lower Sava Valley" is misleading in terms of the entire length of the Sava, but Posavje is a Slovene construction that is semantically transparent to Slovene speakers and opaque to English speakers (like Podravje 'Drava Valley', Posočje 'Soča Valley' in Slovenia and Podonavje 'Danube Valley', Ponilje 'Nile Valley' outside Slovenia). A better move (retaining the English name) would be Lower Sava Valley → Lower Sava Valley (Slovenia). Doremo (talk) 11:02, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Posavina should probably also be renamed to something more English; as the article notes in the intro, it is "a Slavic name for ... the Sava river basin." Otherwise, by the native-name standard we'd be calling the Nile Valley the Wādī an Nīl and the Amazon Basin the Bacia do rio Amazonas. Doremo (talk) 11:23, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, Posavje is only one way to go (native name), and I agree that the term may be as you say opaque to English speakers, but Central Sava Valley, Lower Sava Valley should definitely be renamed to avoid confusion which is inevitable in an article on the Sava river. How would disambiguating it with as Lower Sava Valley (Slovenia) work in such an article then?--Tomobe03 (talk) 12:13, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

The term "Lower Sava Valley" (specifically for Slovenia) is found in the American work Rand McNally Encyclopedia of World Rivers, 1980, the British work Jugoslavia: Physical Geography, 1944, and the American work Standard Encyclopedia of the World's Rivers and Lakes, 1965, just to cite some older sources. So the term has a relatively old history of use in native-English sources. Doremo (talk) 13:51, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

The following is quote of further discussion between Doremo and me.--Tomobe03 (talk) 15:47, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

You mentioned Posavina as a likely candidate for renaming (rated "start", but probably no better than a "stub" really), and that one could probably be safely merged with Upper/Central/Lower Sava Valley articles (three stubs). A similar thing already happened when "Bosanska Posavina" was merged into "Posavina". This would allow for a comprehensive article on the river valley and avoid all the confusion generated by ambiguous titles and titles incomprehensible to native speakers of English. I am aware that in national contexts Posavje/Posavina mean four different things in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, but maybe that's precisely the reason a single article should detail all of those in appropriate sections. After all term "Adriatic Coast" in Croatian, Slovene or Italian does not necessarily refer to the same stretch of shore. Should there be sufficient material in any of the hypothetical sections of the merged article on Sava valley to spin off a C-class or better article, the separate article should be there - right now the articles combined would hardly more than a Start class. What do you think about this idea?--Tomobe03 (talk) 12:40, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Just some general thoughts that might help in finding a good solution:
1) The Rhine article incorporates non-English names in italics ("Vorderrhein, or Anterior Rhine", "Hinterrhein, or Posterior Rhine", "Alpenrhein or 'Alpine Rhine'", Alter Rhein "Old Rhine"); that's probably one solution to keep in mind. Perhaps the Rhine article would be a good model for a unified Sava article, with italic non-English names followed by glosses.
2) Slovene Posavje ought to mean the entire length of the Sava, source to mouth (like Povolžje 'Volga Valley'), but in practice the term means only the stretch in Slovenia (and usually only the lower stretch), so the name has undergone some kind of special semantic development.
3) One of the problems with native (non-English) terms is competing languages; for example, the Rába/Raab Valley is called Porabje in Slovene, Rába-völgy in Hungarian, and Raabtal in German. All three languages have a legitimate "native" claim to the name based on ethnicity, but none of these names is really appropriate for an English article (especially without prejudice to the others).
4) Some Slovene terms like Posavje, Porabje, etc. may not really be about the river itself, but more about naming national/ethnic territory. So for Slovenes the Sava Valley is limited to the Slovene Sava Valley in a practical sense. Perhaps a similar perspective is at work in French Alps, Swiss Alps, Bavarian Alps, etc.; it's all just "Alps" if seen from space, but when a Frenchman talks about going dans les Alpes he's probably thinking of Grenoble (and not, say, Berchtesgaden). I don't know if this means we need articles on the "Slovene Sava", "Croatian Sava", "Bosnian Sava", and "Serbian Sava", but that would parallel the Alps articles.
This doesn't really provide any solution, but I think it raises some issues that should be considered. I think point #3 is especially important from the perspective of English WP. Doremo (talk) 13:12, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

True, for Croats, "Posavina" is normally limited to Croatian banks of the Sava, and then normally downstream from Zagreb, sometimes even downstream of Sisak (although the term may appear to cover whatever's adjacent to the Sava. Literally the same term in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Serbia refers to something else sensu stricto (whatever's adjacent to Sava in a given country). That in itself is puzzling enough for casual readers.

What bothers me the most in terms of Central and Lower Sava Valleys is that use of the terms in article on the Sava River creates confusing sentences where Sava flows from the Lower Sava Valley into the central part of the river's course. In the LSV article there is ample space and opportunity to elaborate on etymology of the name and its geographic location, but if the Sava article goes into such detail on each (micro)region, we'll quickly arrive at unwieldy text that is cumbersome to read. Furthermore, it is really dubious that "Lower Sava Valley" is a term English speakers use to describe Posavje.

I agree that terms like Posavje or Posavina may have little to do with Sava itself, but that's matter for the specific articles to elaborate upon.--Tomobe03 (talk) 13:31, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I've found a lot of hits for the "Eastern French Alps" (which are western overall, of course) and the "Northern Italian Alps" (which are southern overall, of course). The analogy for the Sava would be the "Lower Slovene Sava Valley" (which is upper overall, of course). "Lower Sava Valley" sounds completely natural to me and Slovene Posavje is synonymous with spodnje Posavje (literally 'Lower Sava Valley'), as noted in the discussion. It's also a good and logical counterpart to "Upper Sava Valley" (Sln. zgornje Posavje). Doremo (talk) 13:42, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

"Lower Slovene Sava Valley" and similar solutions would definitely improve the situation - remove any confusion and being very intuitive indeed. I'd support such a change.--Tomobe03 (talk) 13:51, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Of course, it needs to be natural as well. I've found "lower Swiss Rhone Valley" and several hits for the "upper German Rhine Valley", which implies that the construction "Upper/Central/Lower Slovene Sava Valley" would be acceptable from the perspective of naturalness. Doremo (talk) 13:56, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, I agree.--Tomobe03 (talk) 13:58, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I also have no objection to the change. Perhaps it would be best to link or copy this conversation to the Lower Sava Valley talk page and wait a bit to see if any other contributors would like to comment or offer another solution. Doremo (talk) 14:02, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it would probably be the best to copy this there.--Tomobe03 (talk) 15:37, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. The English name is Lower Sava Valley see for example http://www.premiumwinesofslovenia.eu/lower-sava-valley and there is currently no need to disambiguate this name. The article makes it clear which region is meant. Andrewa (talk) 20:32, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.