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Revision as of 14:21, 24 September 2012

Vietnam Stub‑class Low‑importance

This article is part of WikiProject Vietnam, an attempt to create a comprehensive, neutral, and accurate representation of Vietnam on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.VietnamWikipedia:WikiProject VietnamTemplate:WikiProject VietnamVietnam Stub This article has been rated as Stub-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

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The page should be Bắc Kạn, not Bac Kan. --Ionius Mundus 15:34, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

The request to rename this article to Bắc Kạn has been carried out. If the page title has consensus, be sure to close this discussion using {{subst:RM top|'''page moved'''.}} and {{subst:RM bottom}} and remove the {{Requested move/dated|…}} tag, or replace it with the {{subst:Requested move/end|…}} tag.

Bac Kan → Bắc Kạn – The diacritics in this article has been moved 5 times without discussion the most recent move being the removal of the diacritics (from Bắc Kạn city to Bac Kan) today. Bắc Kạn Province employs the diacritics, as do articles that employ the diactics for disambiguation ( see: Sông Cầu, Bắc Kạn, Cẩm Giàng, Bắc Kạn, Chợ Mới, Bắc Kạn). There is also no shortage of usage amongst english sources. The title with diacritics does appear to have about 20% more sources but in either case this move should have come to WP:RM. Good case of WP:RETAIN.--Labattblueboy (talk) 15:47, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Survey

• Support - and grateful to Labattblueboy for this move proposal. The use of local Latin script (actually Portuguese based, but published in Rome in 1651) is consistent with (i) en.wp treatment of all other Latin-alphabet languages, Turkish, Maltese, Irish, Serbian. (ii) the only RMs there have been on VN geo names Talk:Cà Mau 2010, 2011, 2012. (iii) August RfC with 23 vs 16 for Vietnamese spelling.

There's another more basic reason as well, which won't be apparent to non-Vietnamese reading Users, but is particularly important here. It's the reason the Jesuit missionaries applied accents and tones to the old Chinese script in the first place. A British version "Bac Kan" could mean various things, but with the Portuguese-influenced accents:

Bắc Kạn "Back" means Northern Water-margins wikt:北wikt:𣴓

Bạc Liêu "Baak" usually means Silver, but here the characters are Thin Distant wikt:薄wikt:遼

The markings in the alphabet created by the Jesuit missionaries - and later enforced/encouraged by the French don't just tell the reader how to pronounce the names, they also disambiguate between different meanings: The place name Bắc Kạn, Northern Water-margins, isn't just a random set of letters it tells the reader something about the history/geography of the place. Of course few Vietnamese today can read or write the Sino "北" and "薄" which lie behind Bắc and Bạc, but everyone still knows that Bắc means "North" and Bạc means "Silver" ...but what does "Bac" mean?

In ictu oculi (talk) 01:26, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

"Silver distant"? Is this a joke? Bạc is 薄. It has nothing to do with silver. It's probably just a way to write a sound phonetically using Chinese characters. Kauffner (talk) 06:30, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

No it's not a joke, it's a result of not returning to proofread, Bạc generally is silver obviously wikt:铂, as any beginning student would know, in this name it is 薄 weak, thin - as I linked. You think I can't click a link I link? The point being that these names, have meanings and pronunciations which are different. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:30, 22 September 2012 (UTC)oa

Now you're translating "Bac Lieu" as "thin distant"? Not every Vietnamese word is based on Chinese, you know. Even if the word does come from Chinese, Vietnamese know nothing about Chinese characters. They don't think about the issue this way. Kauffner (talk) 16:43, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. None of the methods of selecting a title recommended in PLACE would lead you to select one with Vietnamese diacritics in it.
  • Method 1: Consult other encyclopedias: Britannica, Columbia and Encarta do not use Vietnamese diacritics. The CIA World Factbook, Book 2010 gives "Bac Kan."
  • Method 2: Consult GBooks: Out 32 deghosted hits for "Bac Kan" -llc, I found only two English-language books that give this name with diacritics: Moving Mountains and Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang. Moving Mountains does not otherwise use diacritics, so this example appears to be an editing oversight.
  • Method 3: Consult standard histories: Karnow's Vietnam: A history (1997), Corfield's The History of Vietnam (2008), Taylor's The Birth of Vietnam (1991), and Woods' Vietnam: An Illustrated History (2002) do not use diacritics — or mention Bac Kan. The name is given without diacritics in Brocheux's Ho Chi Minh: A Biography and in The French Indochina War 1946-1954 (1998).
  • Method 4: Consult major news sources: The news media follows AP style and thus rarely uses diacritics, let alone Vietnamese diacritics. See Reuters, ABC (Australia), BBC, or RFI.

It's not a criteria in the guideline, but I also suggest consulting the Vietnam-based English-language media. It's their country and all, so perhaps they know how to spell this name. Here's a roundup: VOV Online, Saigon Times, Tuoi Tre, Thanh Nien, VietnamNet, VGP News, and VietnamPlus. If you look at the VGP site, you can see that they used diacritics at one time, but no longer do so. Some may ask, "What's the harm in putting the marks in anyway?" The title is supposed to tell the reader the name of the subject as it commonly appears in English. To put in marks that are not found in the sources is to misinform. The marks will still be given in the article regardless of what the title is. Kauffner (talk) 06:30, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

WP:RETAIN has to with British vs American spelling. I don't the relevance. In the past year, this article has been at Bắc Kạn and at Bắc Kạn city, but not at the proposed form. Kauffner (talk) 07:33, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

WP:RETAIN applies to any variety of English. In the case of proper names, I have yet to see an argument that states that the diacritics render an article title non-English (English terms with diacritical marks). In terms of being located at Bắc Kạn, you moved the article from Bắc Kạn to Bac Kan in August 2011.--Labattblueboy (talk) 15:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I looked at Category:Varieties_of_English_templates, but I didn't see Viet-lish, Franglais, or Deutsche-lish. Kauffner (talk) 16:43, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

• Support; more accurate spelling. The wave of undiscussed moves in this controversial area is very disappointing but, alas, people know they can get away with gaming the system. bobrayner (talk) 13:03, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

Comment: There was a broad consensus to use diacritics until Kauffner started quietly and unilaterally moving titles to non-diacritic versions some time ago. More recent testings of opinion (as described above) have shown that the preference is to use the diacritics. Note: I am not !voting here, as I was approached by iio to comment, but I have an interest in this discussion as I moved the article to the diacritic version more than two years ago, after discussion. I would have been expected to be asked to comment by the proposer of the reverse move. Colonies Chris (talk) 17:59, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

• I see that yet another RM has degenerated into accusations and misrepresentations. Colonies Chris isn't the only editor here who was recruited by IIO. So was Labattblueboy, as you can see from his talk page. IIO badgers numerous editors this way, but not everyone responds. As for the alleged "broad consensus" that I supposedly disrupted, Ho Chi Minh and other war-related articles have never had diacritics. This is not a hypothetical example as both IIO and CC have expressed interest in seeing this article moved. The only mention of Vietnamese on Prolog’s much cited diacritics page is this quote from National Geographic`s style guide: "Although Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet, the number of accent marks can be distracting and may therefore be omitted." In July-August 2011, there was a very large RfC on the subject of diacritics. Those who proposed increased use of diacritics specifically excluded Vietnamese. I rewrote the Vietnamese naming conventions to conform to this RfC. I also put this and other Vietnamese titles at ASCII forms at this time. Afterwards, I made a statement concerning this issue which was widely quoted and read. Yet these articles were stable at the titles I put them for a year. IIO and I have a history, and his vendetta against me pre-dates his interest in Vietnam. Kauffner (talk) 06:12, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

So where was the "discussion" in 2010? All I see is, "Make consistent with other capitals". Kauffner (talk) 06:20, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

This isn't personal - the reason I believe this article should be restored is simple (as above) and has nothing to do personally with Kauffner at all. For the record my own time in Vietnam goes back to the early 1990s. I created Mạc Đĩnh Chi Nov 5 2011, but I was not aware that 1 User had moved 800 geo articles contrary to RMs. How could anyone know? the original RM tags had been deleted, and the main RM archived by a mysterious IP. As for "I can boast of moving the Vietnamese bios and geography to non-diacritic titles -- It's hundreds of titles and took me several months to do." who knew that was there? The thing is we all take things on trust. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:35, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

The discussion I referred to took place at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Vietnam/Naming convention debate. And I'd like to thank IIO for notifying me of this proposal, remedying Kauffner's failure to invite comment from a previous editor with a clear interest in the question. Colonies Chris (talk) 13:36, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

The idea that I had been recruited is not only an assumption of bad faith but rather confusing given I haven’t supported either the broad inclusion or exclusion of diacritics. Dependng on the requested move, my view has been different. I inputted this requested move after making clear to both you and In ictu oculi on 12 September that actioning moves that either inserted or removed diacritics was controversial and to stop doing so on your own. I have been checking each of your logs every couple of days to check for undiscussed moves that were Vietnamese diacritic based. Aa already mentied this one was moved undiscussed from Bắc Kạn city to Bac Kan on 21 September. So, I will say it again, stop moving articles based on diacritics given its clear these move are controversial and consequently should be discussed before they are moved.--Labattblueboy (talk) 14:21, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

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