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Proposal for changes to the "National varieties of English" section

I agree with the basic principles underlying this system, but would like to propose some changes. The first two should be straightforward and uncontroversial. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the principle has a major flaw: Many contributors don’t obey to one variety of English (even if they said they did), if such could be defined clearly in the first place — limiting it to “national varieties” is even harder. Template:User Mixed English has over 250 users transcluding it on their user pages and not all of them are non-native speakers of the language. Many articles can’t be geographicaly bound to one regiolect. I don’t think it’s a problem to use petrol and gasoline alongside each other inside one article, because they are synonyms, in everyone’s passive vocabulary at least. I would very much welcome a set of rules selecting one preferred form for each of the major systematic cases (-re/-er, -ise/-ize, -yse/-yze, -ou-/-o-, -ell-/-el-, æ|œ/ae|oe/e, …).
Let’s be brave, let’s make the MoS more prescriptive. — Christoph Päper 19:17, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if it was just a poor example, but I know from reading Talk:Gasoline that petrol and gasoline are not "in everyone's passive vocabulary" with many editors (perhaps falsly) claiming to have never heard of one or the other, or not known they were synonyms, before coming to the article. — The Storm Surfer 00:56, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Possibly correctly. There is a novel by Arthur Ransome, which depends in part on the characters not knowing the synonymy. It's a juvenile, but the older characters are of the same age as many of our readers, and some of our editors. Other examples would probably be worse. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:12, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

"Provoking conflict"

  • Move the comment "If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoke conflict by changing to another. (Sometimes, this can happen quite innocently, so please do not be too quick to make accusations!)" to Rule 4 rather than Rule 1. First note that the rules are given "in rough order of precedence". Rules 1 and 2 are precisely designed to specify cases where changes are justified, and this language suggests that even justified changes might provoke conflict. This is counterproductive because people should be encouraged to accept changes based on these rules rather than reject them. This language was originally lower down in the list. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
      • Support - I agree with the rough-order-of-precedence argument: this belongs after those rules identifying when changes are justified. Rule 4 is the best place for this: it compliments the point already there. I do smile, though, when I read "this language suggests that even justified changes might provoke conflict" ... all the justification in the world is no guarantee against conflict. Jimp 16:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
        • You're right. I guess what I'm saying is that Wikipedia shouldn't be presenting conflict caused by improvements to the encyclopedia as something to be avoided. Joeldl 09:37, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

"Rarely the case"

  • Remove the comment "which will rarely be the case" from under Rule 4. Rules 1 through 3 give good reasons to change spelling/usage in cases which cannot be described as "rare", and this language seems to create a presumption against those arguing that the requisite conditions for changes under Rules 1 through 3 apply. This change was made over the objections of one editor (in his edit summary) on 24 December 2006, and I can locate no talk page discussion of the change. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
      • Support - No, these cases are not really rare and even if they were what use would it be of noting this here? Jimp 16:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Oppose — These cases are rare because, first, this section is talking about wholesale changing of the entire article (not changing one errant spelling which would fall under Articles should use the same spelling system and grammatical conventions throughout.) so the only reason lefit is If there is a strong tie to a specific region/dialect, use that dialect. and:
  1. Most articles do not have such a tie.
  2. Articles that do tend to start out in that dialect, either through conscientious editors or because such articles are usually started by people who speak the dialect in question. – The Storm Surfer 01:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, "rare" is an exaggeration, even if it is only warranted in a minority of cases. It seems to me that it is quite likely that in articles of international interest, a "haphazard mix" may well have developed through lack of attention. In that case one needs to change perhaps half the spellings, in some cases more if you need to resort to the "first major contributor" rule. A second issue is that it's only rare if you assume that other people are abiding by the rules in the first place. Finally, it is not rare that disagreement may arise about whether an article is country-related, particularly when a subject has some aspects of worldwide interest and others of interest to only one or a few English-speaking countries. In such cases the article may well have been started by people not from those countries. For example, it is entirely conceivable that an American interested in France might start an article on some aspect of EU law. Then other editors are justified in changing it to UK/Irish usage. People who are not knowledgeable about the rules may be comforted in the idea that the guidelines support them, because it is supposedly "rarely the case" that changes are needed. Joeldl 02:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment - Justification for a wholesale changing of an entire article does arise and, whilst not all that common, it seems to arise (in my experience) more often than really fits with its description as "rare". That aside, though, what I question is the use of noting this "rarity" at all. These words don't really seem to add anything. You either have such a case or you don't - whether these cases be rare or not has no effect on what should be done in them. Therefore I support this suggestion of Joeldl's. Jimp 02:21, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

"Haphazard mix"

  • Relax the "one dialect only" rule to concern specific points of usage/spelling only. The "one dialect" rule seems like a needless fixation to me. Of course, nobody wants to see both honor and honour in the same article. I would also agree that you don't want color and honour. But what difference does it make if you have honor and centre (which is actually a possible combination in some countries, but that's beside the point)? This rule also means that we have to go back and look for evidence of what the original author's dialect was. This is not always possible because you may see centre, but you still don't know whether the person is Canadian, British or other, so you can't conclude whether to write tyre or tire. And you may well, for example, have direct knowledge that the original author was Canadian, but you still can't conclude whether they would have written honour (predominant in Canada) or honor (common alternative). Some would suggest the original author in some sort plant a flag on the article with, for example, a "UK spelling" tag, but this seems quite undignified to me. Let them plant a flag with whatever words they happen to use. Also, I don't see any reason why the use of elevator instead of lift in one part of the article means that one has to write gasoline instead of petrol elsewhere. Again, the fact that two words may be distributed without a definite pattern across multiple English-speaking countries makes this rule difficult to apply.

    So my proposal is to apply the single-dialect rule only to specific points of usage in which the coexistence of different practices would produce an impression of disunity of the article. I believe this means essentially:

  • Don't use different words to mean the same thing (e.g., petrol and gasoline). This might extend to whole sets of words in specialized areas of vocabulary, rather than just individual ones, but judgments would need to be made on an individual basis.
  • Don't use the same word to mean different things in a way that would be confusing. (Try to avoid using college in both the American sense of "university" and the Canadian sense of "level intermediate between secondary school and university" when referring to educational institutions in China, for example. In this case, though, the "Use words common to all" rule would probably kick in anyway.)
  • Use consistent punctuation, capitalization practices, etc., throughout the article, but if two English-speaking countries disagree on unrelated points (e.g., use of quotation marks on one hand and use of periods in such abbreviations as Dr. on the other), no effort needs to be made to align usage with the preferences of a particular country.
  • Don't use different spellings of the same word.
  • Don't mix spellings in a single family of words. This means a definite choice needs to be made in the -ise/-ize, -our/or, -re/-er groups and similar families.
These guidelines may seem unwieldy, and they are indeed difficult to state. But they are easy to apply, because, basically, what they say is not to worry about the "one dialect" rule except where it really matters. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
      • Comment - I spell it colourisation could live with colourization or colorization but colorisation seems decidedly odd to me. One of my own edits followed the logic color therefore nanometers (as opposed to nanometres which is my prefered spelling). I hadn't been aware that honor and centre was actually a possible combination in some countries (which is not beside the point whilst the one-dialect rule remains in place). But this, to me, would seem to be covered by the impression-of-disunity bit ... to me that is. Is not impression of disunity, then, perhaps a little vague? Unwieldy, difficult to state, open to interpretation ... is this the right direction? On the other hand, I do agree with the concern about trying to figure out the dialect of the first non-stub major contributor but is this even necessary? If you can't determine whether the dialect is Canadian or British and you want to write tyre/tire, it's your call, you narrow it down. However, if the article has sentences like "The mediæval traveller would often practise maths at organised reflexion centres so as to avoid diarrhœa." you shouldn't feel free to throw a color into the mix. Jimp 16:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
        • I think color would be strange in it mainly because it is so obvious the sentence was chosen specifically to illustrate British spelling. Personally, I wouldn't particularly mind seeing "the color of his reflexion", but even that is unlikely to appear because it would be unusual to insert a word in someone else's sentence and for that word to happen to be of variable spelling. I think some of us may just have a subconscious desire to be able to attribute a hypothetical nationality to "the" author of an article. But of course, there is no single author, and perhaps the lengths we should go to to guarantee the appearance of a single author should be limited. In practice it places an extra burden on us to have the rules be nationality-based because we have to consider all the possibilities in various countries when the nationality of the original author is unknown, when there even is a single author. Theoretically, I would prefer to leave "disunity" open to interpretation so that extreme cases can be dealt with individually.

          Canadians are used to seeing mix-and-match spellings. For them, anything goes except the more peculiar British spellings like tyre and kerb. Apart from maths, your example would be entirely possible in Canada. Organised is possible, but unusual. Some newspapers in Canada use color. My sense is that all of the words in the sentence except maths and organised could coexist with color, because all the spellings except organised are frequent in Canada (although practise and reflexion are in the minority), as is color. Organised, though possible, would strike people as particularly British-leaning, and people know color is the American spelling, so organised and color can coexist in the same country but probably not in the same newspaper. I don't think it's really worth sorting out what combinations are possible unless people have a genuine aesthetic problem with these combinations, and I'm saying I don't. Those who do in the U.K. or elsewhere are just as likely to be shocked at some combinations that are possible in Canada as they are at truly impossible ones. I guess the importance of this kind of consistency is a matter of personal taste for people, but I doubt Canadians would be shocked by anything you threw at them. Joeldl 18:19, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

        • By the way, colorise is the main entry in the New Zealand Oxford. It sort of makes sense because -ise/-ize makes you think of French/Latin/Greek words and a very English u doesn't really belong there. Sort of like humorous. Joeldl 10:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
It is interesting that you should mention the word tyre, because the original British spelling has flipped between the two versions:
"1485, "iron rim of a carriage wheel," probably from tire "equipment, dress, covering" (c.1300), an aphetic form of attire. The notion is of the tire as the dressing of the wheel. The original spelling was tyre, which had shifted to tire in 17c.-18c., but since early 19c. tyre has been revived in Great Britain and become standard there."
The I spelling is still considered valid in the UK, albeit very rarely used. Likewise, -ize versus -ise; modern uses of the Z apparently derive from the original British spellings of those words, and this too is apparently considered by some etymlogists to be a valid alternative spelling in British English, despite falling out of use a long time ago. Adrian M. H. 17:35, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
"I think color would be strange in it mainly because it is so obvious the sentence was chosen specifically to illustrate British spelling." yeah, it was a bit of an over-kill but you get what I mean. "The color of his reflexion", whilst a little unusual is still able to claim closeness to its Latin roots compare this to "the colour of his center". You write, Joeldl, "I don't think it's really worth sorting out what combinations are possible unless people have a genuine aesthetic problem with these combinations, and I'm saying I don't." You may not have such a problem, others may claim to, how do we sort out whether the be genuine problems or not? It's all very subjective: haphazard mixes are okay unless they produce an impression of disunity you write. Some might argue that any such mix produces such an impression. Jimp 03:13, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
  • The basic rule I am proposing is to is to say that inconsistency need only be avoided if such inconsistency is confusing or distracting, and the examples I gave are just examples, similar to the examples of country-related topics given lower down. It may be more difficult to state, but it is easier to apply for two reasons. First, it means there are fewer cases where action needs to be taken. Second, the current system is difficult to apply because you need to try to piece together the hypothetical original author's dialect (which may not exist because there are multiple authors), and then make judgments about what that person would have preferred. Since at this point we may not know their dialect, this involves consideration of all possibilities in all countries. I am saying we should just look and see that the original author wrote -ize, and reflection hence we should write -ize and connection, but this says nothing about -or/-our, and we are free to choose. Currently, we need to think about the fact that -ize and reflection most likely mean that the author is Canadian or American, and choose among possible spellings for the U.S. and Canada. But it is possible that the author was among the minority of Britons who write "reflection" and "organize". Or, maybe we know the "original" author was Canadian. What do we do then? Does an American editor let Canadian usage claim the entire article, even though the first author didn't use any non-U.S. spellings? As you can see, the apparent "simplicity" of the current system stems only from what it leaves unsaid and the details it leaves unresolved on how to apply it. Joeldl 08:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
  • More important than counting how many cases there be in which action need be taken, question how clear it be whether such action need be taken or not. What seems confusing or distracting to one might not seem that way to another. Either "~or" or "~our" sit comfortably with "~ize" and "~ection" so, yes, the option should be considered open, but "~or" does seem odd next to "~ise" and "~exion" (I don't believe Kiwis write this way no matter what the New Zealand Oxford might say), so, "~ise" and "~exion" entail "~our" (unless the editor can come up with a good reason for "~or"). Jimp 03:13, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
  • You are certainly right about New Zealanders writing "colour". The question is whether to delete the u in suffixed forms such as colorise, by analogy with humorous and other cases. I think they're exactly like Britons as regards color appearing alongside organise. Joeldl 14:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • It depends on the suffix. The u is always dropped when you add an ~ous and never dropped when you add an ~ed (you wouldn't write colour & colored), when you add ~ise/~ize, though, you'd usually keep the u but I'd have to admit that dropping it may be possible (Is this the norm in NZ?). Of course, never say "never" nor say "always". Jimp 15:56, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't know if honour and centre are possible in the U.S., but they are both the majority spelling in Canada, with honor and center in the minority. I agree with the U.S. distinction you've drawn between college and university in the U.S., except that all universities are also colleges, but not conversely. It is common in the U.S. to say, "He's going to college next year," even if the "college" is Harvard. I think there are some newspapers in Canada where you would find honor and centre together, so this would be an acceptable combination under any rules. Joeldl 21:47, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

    This source says that centre is preferred 93%-7% in Canada. Honor predominates in newspapers, while honour is in the majority in academic publications. So honor and centre are an acceptable combination. Joeldl 22:09, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

"First major contributor"

  • Assuming the "one dialect" rule is relaxed as above, it becomes less important to look at the first major contributor in Rule 5, and we can look at the first contributor instead. In fact, in deciding whether to write organise or organize, determine whether -ise or -ize predominates in the article (rather than identifying a hypothetical dialect). If this is impossible to determine or disagreement persists, just look for the first ever occurrence in the article of a word in the -ise/-ize family. This is an objective rule that will make it unnecessary to determine the nationality of the first major contributor, and, if they turn out to be Britsh/Australian, etc., to guess whether they would have preferred -ise or -ize. (The Oxford prefers -ize, though this is a minority spelling in Britain, Australia, etc.) Also, one criticism I see of the "first major contributor" rule is that there may have been many contributors before the article stopped being a stub, and the person who removed the "stub" template may not have done much at all. If all we have to do is look for the first occurrence of petrol/gasoline for example, without regard to the significance of that editor's other contributions, we have a simple criterion that is not unfair, given that the effect will be limited to the determination of a single vocabulary choice rather than the dialect of the entire article, and the criterion does not call for an evaluation of the importance of various editors' contributions. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
  • In this case, the new rule is not any more complex to state than the other one. We are just deleting "significant". It is useful because it provides a more easily and objectively applied criterion. Joeldl 08:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
    • That would enable people to go around writing substubs to "claim" the article for their particular dialect. There are some who think the entire encyclopedia should be in their dialect because it's more common among internet users or more "correct" for historical reasons. The current wording is best. — Omegatron 12:48, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
  • With the previous proposal, they would only "claim" it for -ize or -our or whatever words they happened to use. Also, the current system says nothing about what happens when many people contribute before it stops being a stub. In that case, which is frequent, "major" remains undefined. Joeldl 18:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

"Nationally predominant form"

  • Relax the rule about a "nationally predominant form". The reality is that any English written by academics or journalists in an English-speaking country is, with few exceptions, easy to understand. I don't think we should have to determine whether soda or pop is "nationally predominant" in the United States. Either could be found in academic writing or in the press anywhere in the United States. Although pop is more common in Canada, English-speaking Quebecers say (and write) "soft drink", never "pop", and "soft drink" would also be understood anywhere. Along the same lines, eaves troughs is more common in Canada than gutters, but not in Quebec. Scotland in particular is well known to have its own vocabulary distinct from England's, not only in informal contexts, but appearing in academic writing, etc., as well. The press and academic authors "self-censor" somewhat so that regional words they think unlikely to be known to outsiders appear less often in their writing. But on the other hand, there are some well established regional words which people may consciously or unconsciously retain in their writing. Since, ultimately, the press and academic authors are our model at Wikipedia, there is no need to expect people to self-censor beyond what they already do naturally when writing for a national or, in the case of articles of international interest, international, audience. I would rename the entire section to "Geographic varieties of English", and say that there is no preference among geographic varieties of English, so long as usage conforms to what might be anticipated from a speaker of a particular variety writing in an academic context or in the press. There is little doubt that this includes the use of some regional words as well as "national" ones, and Wikipedia should allow this. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree, to a degree: it is clear that there is no clear standard for what constitutes "American English", "Canadian English", "British English", or "Australian English", and editors have some leeway within the standards, allowing for certain variations within the regional mix. On the other hand, there are some really unlikely combinations that don't generally occur, and those really need to be avoided: -or -ise mixes, for example: very rarely is the word "colorised" seen (I think that was mentioned). We don't care about an exact definition of what constitutes any Canadian English, for example, but we need a standard to which to keep articles. I support this idea, but only to the extent that it acknowledges that individual varieties are themselves unstable - anything more, and we are arguing to allow gross inconsistency in articles. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 17:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I think spelling does tend to be more of a national thing rather than regional within countries, so this is really much more about vocabulary than spelling. As far as spelling is concerned, I don't think it's worth trying to prevent -or/-ise mixes for reasons explained under "Haphazard mix". Joeldl 18:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I must say that I believe that the opposite of relaxation should happen. Wikipedia needs a standard form of the language to use. If it is not a standard form of a language, confusion can result. All of the English posting should be done on one standard, for example BBC English; without uniformity, a encyclopedia is nothing.Spacedwarv 01:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I think the inclusive nature of these guidelines is something for Wikipedia to be proud of. If a single standard were chosen, there is little doubt that it would be American English, the form used by two-thirds of the world's English-speakers. Currently, the guidelines lead to the result that about two-thirds of what's written is in American English, for that very reason, and that seems fair. Joeldl 10:17, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
It would not be American English, American English is only America, which is only 300 million people, the commonwealth composes of 1.7 BILLION people, nearly all of which use a more BBC like English, no. Spacedwarv 23:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
You do realise, Spacedwarv, that the use of billion to mean one thousand million is an Americanism (well, they got it from the French but the French have since realised their mistake). Jimp 00:16, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
The number of people in the world who speak English well enough for it to be identifiably "British" or "American" leaning is not that much larger than the number of native speakers. Joeldl 08:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Yeah, the words "nationally predominant" should be changed to something not related to nations, like "officially defined" or something. Like a dialect for which an official dictionary exists. — Omegatron 02:13, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
There are no "official" dictionaries of English, just dictionaries that claim to record usage. Good dictionaries record words specific to places like Scotland, New England, etc. Joeldl 08:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
A provision for common sense may be useful; but do we really want to write Daniel Webster in New Hampshire dialect? Written subnational dialects really don't differ all that much; and soda/pop really only falls under the "leave it alone" parts of this rule anyway; it's not (now) tied to any particular variety of English. (Local brands, like Moxie, probably should follow local dialect; adding translations might be a good thing.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Written subnational dialects do differ, most notably in Scotland, but elsewhere as well on issues of vocabulary. I think one of soda or pop might well fail the "nationally predominant" criterion, but common sense tells us that its application, at least in this case, makes no sense. Let me turn this around. It is understood that in the context of the Manual of Style, we are only talking about written Scottish English, etc. In what cases would the "nationally predominant" criterion disallow something in a way that was justified? Joeldl 21:58, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

One of the nice things about English is that, in the words of Clive James, it's "big and baggy". Let's keep it that way. Tony 10:02, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

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