Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:04, 2 February 2011

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Diacritical marks

The main Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (use English) page says that diacritical marks should not be used unless it is familiar with English readers. The whole idea behind transliteration is that an English-keyboard user need not be required to figure out how to type out the Vietnamese diacritical marks. Yellowtailshark 02:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The "Đ" is not pronounced like an English "D" in either northern or southern Vietnam. This creates a problem for words with this letter. For cities with well known romanizations like Saigon and Hanoi, we'd probably want to use our normal WP rule, like we do for Milan or Rome--just use the English version, without diacritics. But for names, it seems that using diacritics is good. Badagnani 03:53, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Quite honestly, I see no place for diacritics at all in any of the articles in English Misplaced Pages except as a gloss to illustrate the Vietnamese spelling of a place name or proper name after the first occurrence of the name in its normal, unaccented English spelling. This is not a question of political correctness (respect for how others spell names), it's a question of simple convenience for the vast majority of readers who neither know nor care about how Vietnamese names are accented and are not interested in obtaining the fancy software to be able to type in Vietnamese. I find it difficult to locate the articles I wrote recently on the 1860s Cochinchina Campaign because place names like Vinh Long and Bien Hoa (their normal spelling in English) have been given accents. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia written in English, not Vietnamese. Having said that, we should gloss all Vietnamese place and personal names with their accented versions on their first appearance in an article.

This is how I personally have been dealing with the problem, in the lead sentence of my articles:

The Capture of Bien Hoa (Vietnamese: Biên Hòa) on 16 December 1861 was an important allied victory in the Cochinchina campaign (1858–62).

Djwilms (talk) 04:08, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Diacriticals are used for all the European languages. See Gerhard Schröder, Horst Köhler, Hermann Göring, Göttingen, Lübeck, Finistère, or Lech Wałęsa. Finding the articles? That's what redirects are for. Kauffner (talk) 19:09, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Diacritics are used for European languages when English uses them. This is sometimes but not always; the most obvious example being George Frideric Handel, not Händel. Usage should prevail; some of these examples should be changed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:05, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Knowing the History of Vietnam and its relations with other countries, especially English-speaking countries, since we're talking about an English Misplaced Pages, I'd guess that there are two major bodies of literature that talks about Vietnam: during the Indochina Wars, and literature written after the US embargo was lifted and Vietnam's relations with other countries became normalized. So when I weigh in on "common usage" argument for having diacritics, I suspect that literature written during the war would omit the diacritics, and that if there are diacritic usage in English media, then that is really a more recent phenomenon. It would be an exhaustive statistical research to count pronouns in all articles and books written about Vietnam during the war to see what names and geographical locations were often mentioned. My Lai, Ngo Dinh Diem, Bien Hoa and Lam Son seem like names that were mentioned often enough in media and books to constitute non-diacritics as common usage. But, let's say with a hamlet in North Vietnam, where media coverage during the war was limited, then it's not so clear cut. Spelling conventions for cases like those will likely to come from more recent sources (past 20 years), and quite possible that diacritic convention would dominate. yellowtailshark (talk) 12:18, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Article title

I looked at a few government sites that use áo dài and ao dai. The US Embassy in Canberra, Australia uses ao dai. So does the HCMC People's Committee for its English-language pages. The site uses áo dài for its Vietnamese languages sections. It seems to me that diacritical omission will become used on official sources. Yellowtailshark 05:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

"ao dai" appears in various English-language dictionaries, so this is a common usage name. Kauffner (talk) 07:55, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

The official website of the government of Vietnam is recently writing names with diacritics in its English section. DHN 05:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

In the case of Cả River when I googled for it, the only reference was the Misplaced Pages article itself (hah! go figure). Ca River is mentioned in the Encyclopedia Britannica as well as this paper from the National University of Laos. Yellowtailshark (talk) 04:33, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

As a model, scholarly usage beats official usage or newspaper usage. In scholarly writing, you put the diacriticals in as long as there are no technical barriers. Misplaced Pages doesn't have the technical barriers that prevented people from putting in diacriticals historically. For, say, German, the diacriticals go in, period. It doesn't depend on sources or official Web sites. It's Göttingen, Lübeck, and so forth. You can write good German without diacriticals, but Vietnamese without diacriticals is just gibberish. Kauffner (talk) 04:39, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

We are not discussing the usage of German in English; and if we were, this would be wrong on both counts. English does not always use diacritics, and scholarly usage is not our model; our article titles are chosen for lay readers, not for specialists. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:11, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Let us, therefore, consider actual parallels. We do not - and should not - include Greek accents, ancient or modern, in article titles; we do not - and should not - include pinyin tones. In both cases, we indicate the marks once in a transcription of the Greek or Chinese characters. So here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:00, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

You do realize that Vietnamese speakers use the Latin alphabet with diacritics? The situation is therefore is parallel to German and Polish, but unlike Greek or Chinese, which have their own characters. If a publication doesn't use diacritics for technical reasons, it cannot be accepted as a model with respect to this issue. Of course English does not always use diacritics. Names that are common usage in English -- Hanoi, Saigon, Vietnam, etc -- should remain unaccented. Kauffner (talk) 07:55, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I do. That's why I'm comparing it to Pinyin (which has two sets of optional marks for the tones), not to Chinese characters. But even Latin alphabetic languages - perhaps especially they - are respelt on adoption into English; Novak Djokovic, the Djoker, and Handel are two clear examples of this. It may be that in a few centuries or even decades the diacritics of Vietnamese will be as familiar, and as widely adopted, as those of French; but I don't believe, and see no evidence, that that time has come. Misplaced Pages is not a crystal ball. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:50, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Proper nouns

Names

I wonder how useful these templates would be? Template:Vietnamese name and Template:Vietnamese name2 Yellowtailshark 03:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I think these are very useful, firstly because most people would not know that it is the custom to use given names in the ensuing text, and because many of those who are not Asian specialists but who run categorizing and standardizing campaigns will need to know these things, so as to not list someone alphabetically by their given name, or to make other sorts of category/template/standards related mistakes. LordAmeth 14:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Family-name, middle-name, given-name order? Or given-name, middle-name, family-name order? It seems for Vietnamese within Vietnam, the family-name is given first. But for those outside of Vietnam, you will also see the given-name first. Perhaps we should stick with the name order that the person is most commonly referred to as. Yellowtailshark 03:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Locations

I see that words of cities are spelled joined, and sometimes not (e.g. Hà Nội → Hanoi; but Đà Nặng → sometimes Danang, sometimes Da Nang). Any thoughts on this? Yellowtailshark 03:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I am deeply interested, but not very knowledgeable or experienced in Vietnamese history, so I don't presume to speak from knowledge of what the scholarly standards may be. But on Misplaced Pages, I believe that we should try as much as possible to place things in the format most recognizable to the average English speaker. Our average reader is likely to have heard of Hanoi and Tonkin and Saigon, and so these places should be represented in the spelling most common in English; other places like Can Tho and Hai Phong I at least have not heard of, and so perhaps these (and the multitude of more obscure places) should be represented however is most proper in Vietnamese. Since Vietnamese is written in Roman letters (with diacritics, but not in Chinese characters or another writing system), I would imagine there ought to be standards within the Vietnamese language as to this issue, no? LordAmeth 14:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps what might help is to use the spelling from the city's official website. In regards to Danang, they consistently use it without the space. Yellowtailshark 02:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Proper Vietnamese is with diacritical marks and spaces between the syllables, e.g. Đà Nặng, not Danang or Da Nang. English-language usage isn't created by the city's official Web site. If there is a well-known English-language spelling, for example "Saigon" or "Hanoi," that should be used. Otherwise, we should follow Vietnamese usage. Kauffner (talk) 04:54, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

There is a whole Vietnamese Misplaced Pages, for which proper Vietnamese spelling matters. Otherwise, this is an encyclopedic fact, which should indeed be mentioned - once per article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:34, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Monarchs

Sometimes I see King An Dương Vương used, even though vương means "king". Would this be redundant? Should it just be King An Duong?

The standard on Misplaced Pages is to not include titles in article titles. The article should thus be listed at An Duong or An Duong Vuong but not at King... anything. As for how he is referred to later in the article, I'd vote for king only because it's a term widely understood and recognized in English, and because it is widely accepted as the term used to refer to these rulers. There are plenty of other terms (shogun, Opperhoofd, Shah) which do not easily translate to a single term like "king", and those I think can certainly be used as is. However, the more obscure a term is, the more necessary it is to translate or explain it briefly in parens whenever used. In other words, if we are going to start articles with "So-and-so was a vuong of Annam in X year", then there really needs to be a "(King)" right after vuong. LordAmeth 14:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Although Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (names and titles) says not to use titles, it also mentions that it does not apply to East Asian monarchs. According to Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Names of emperors, "Emperor" is an integral part of the name. However, Vua (Emperor) Bao Dai doesn't have any sort of honorific titles in the article name. Then again, Bao Dai isn't the real name, but an imperial title for the era of reign. Likewise, it seems Vương (King) is an integral part of the imperial title. Which would suggest that we translate An Dương Vương as the An Duong King or King of An Duong (his real name was Thục Phán). An Duong, it seems, was a toponym. Yellowtailshark 18:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see. And, of course, now that you mention it, I should have realized that all the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean monarchs do have the title included. Sorry. LordAmeth 22:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Vương and vua both mean "king". "Emperor" is hoang để. Vietnamese generally say vua. It's Vua Bao Dai (King Bao Dai), Các Vua Nguyễn (Nguyen dynasty) and so forth. Kauffner (talk) 03:36, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Chinese and Pinyin transliterations

I do a lot of work on the Chinese/Vietnamese prehistory and ancient history articles. Because the two modern societies share quite a bit in common in terms of their ancient pasts, I use the Template:CJKV to standardize transliterations. One issue is, however, which name to use, Zhao Tuo or Trieu Da for the main article title? Yellowtailshark 03:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Vietnamese person -> Vietnamese name. Chinese person -> Chinese name. Zhao Tuo was Chinese. DHN 03:36, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Copied over from /Tasks

Comment - For articles about Vietnamese Americans who don't use diacritics when spelling their name, that's easy--we do the article titles without diacritics (though we can include them in the first paragraph). But for province names, for example, we have some with and some without. It might be best for these if we arrive at a consensus regarding one way of doing it. Badagnani 07:36, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Working on putting together Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Vietnamese). Yellowtailshark 03:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Updating the guidelines on diacritics

This page has yet to be updated to reflect the vote that was taken back in July. It's still basically a list of reasons not to use diacritics. There was a unanimous vote in favor of using anglicized forms when they are "in common use" (i.e. Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, etc.). (See Question 1). But for other cases the vote was 3-2 in favor of using the Vietnamese form, or at least that is how I interpret Question 9. Kauffner (talk) 14:04, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

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