Talk:Grand-Place

Lemma

This page was originally called "Grote Markt / Grand-Place", but after a search on Google, it appears that "Grand Place" seems the most accepted English equivalent (Google: Brussels "Grand Place" returns about 69,700 while Brussels "Grote Markt" returns 7,140, Brussels "Grote Markt / Grand Place" returns 204 and Brussels "Grand Place / Grote Markt" returns 273). Please discuss this point here if the equivalent does not match your thoughts. Cheers. -Edcolins 20:55, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I just did a Google count for

• "Grand Place" Brussels : 3.580.000 hits
• "Grand-Place" Brussels : 3.680.000 hits

Followingly, Google cannot identify the correct spelling when a lot of writers do not care about the hyphen. But https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/50.84674/4.35231 can; and also https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8456746,4.3525119,127a,35y,45t/data=!3m1!1e3 - both display "Grand-Place". Regarding the hyphen issue, we should not rely on Google voting, but on spelling rules. --Gunnar (talk) 23:42, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

The name

Could someone explain why the name is Grand Place and not Grande Place, which would be grammatically correct. Aaker (talk) 22:08, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Place is masculine, so it's Grand Place. -Oreo Priest 10:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually place is feminine. I asked the same question on the Francophone wiki and I got this answer: "Il s'agit je pense d'une exception de la langue française qui vient d'une forme ancienne, mais il y a une différence de sens: Grand-Place ne veut pas dire "la place de grande dimension", mais "la place la plus importante", où se trouvent, entre autre, l'Hôtel de ville. De la même manière, grand-rue ne veut pas dire nécessairement "rue la plus longue", mais "rue principale", ou grand-mère n'est pas une indication sur la taille de l'ancêtre (on trouve encore la forme vieillie mère-grand dans le Le Petit Chaperon rouge). On dit pourtant Grande-duchesse... Ben2 (d) 8 mars 2008 à 11:14 (CET)" Aaker (talk) 13:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Place is indeed feminine, that's why one says sa place and not son place. Ben is right about the exceptional nature of grand in this sense. --Hooiwind (talk) 15:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

My mistake. I did look it up in the dictionary, but I seem to have misread it anyways. -Oreo Priest 16:00, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Rightly or wrongly, you often see it written with an apostrophe to indicate the missing letter: "Grand’ Place". eg. on this page. --David Edgar (talk) 14:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that the correct spelling is with a hyphen: Grand-Place, as Grand is not an adjective in this case, but the whole expression is a proper noun. Both the UNESCO and the the city of Brussels as well as the Brussels tourist agency use Grand-Place. Besides, that is also the way how it is written in the French article fr:Grand-Place de Bruxelles. Therefore I do propose a page move to "Grand-Place". --Gunnar (talk) 22:56, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Page move

Coming from WP:RM, another thing I'd like to point out as justification for moving the page to Grand Place is that the forward slash causes problems with the page location. The talk page is currently subordinated to its own redirect. If there is consensus to move the page to either Grand Place or Grote Markt, I can perform the move. Parsecboy (talk) 16:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

No matter how awkward it might be for my Flemish ears that the top evidence of the Flemish heritage of Brussels is named with a French name, in this case it is perfectly understandable to move the article to Grand Place, on the condition that the implicit Brussels rule is followed (French title; first line: Dutch first, French second; infobox both). It is indeed near universally known as the Grand Place in English, and it is the official UNESCO title (which is, in a way, ignoring history...).--Hooiwind (talk) 09:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'll go ahead and move the page to Grand Place. Parsecboy (talk) 14:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I've moved the page and fixed the double redirects created, a bot will come by at some point and fix all of the single redirects. Go ahead and reformat the first line to fit the implicit rule, and we'll be done. Parsecboy (talk) 14:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Done. --Hooiwind (talk) 15:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Place name?

Shouldn't this article have the place name in the title - Groot Markt (Brussels) - as it's not the only place to have a Groot Markt! Mjroots (talk) 02:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

This one is by far the most famous. As far as I can tell, there aren't any others on Wikipedia, so there's no sense in even creating a disambiguation page yet. -Oreo Priest ^talk 08:02, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe not in the English Wikipedia today, but that may change in the future. fr:Grand-Place#Liste_de_grand-places --Gunnar (talk) 23:02, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Images

The images recently added are all very nice, but they seem to me to give a very skewed idea of what it looks like because they are all taken at night. It would be nice to have at least one daytime shot. -Oreo Priest ^talk 05:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Dimensions?

It would also be nice to be told the dimensions of the Grand Place. Caeruleancentaur (talk) 23:05, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I did a teeny tiny bit of digging but couldn't fine anything. -Oreo Priest ^talk 14:04, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

The French WP gives the floral carpet's dimensions as 25 x 75 m. Judging by the picture at right, there's about half the width of the carpet on each side, i.e. 12.5 m. Adding that to the carpet gives 50 x 100 m, (roughly 200 x 400 feet), but that's WP:OR and a very rough estimate, so it probably shouldn't go in the article. Hope that helps. Oreo Priest ^talk 04:21, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

So here (in French) the dimensions are given as 68 by 110 metres (223 by 361 ft), which settles the question I believe. My estimate wasn't too bad then. Oreo Priest ^talk 05:45, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Rename?

A bit more of an innocuous renaming discussion this time: it seems that the French name and UNESCO both use Grand-Place rather than Grand Place (no hyphen). Is there a reason we're using Grand Place, or should we change it to Grand-Place? Oreo Priest ^talk 01:58, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Funny how this never ever changed since 2009. There are indeed, a lot of mistakes on this page. Grand-Place is called Grand-Place instead of Grande Place because it comes from Grand'Place, a simple contraction used for all French-speaking Grand-Places. Since a few decades, it is also written as Grand-Place. Both Grand-Place and Grand'Place are correct, but this Grand Place thing certainly is not. Thibaleine (talk) 20:56, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Good to read. Then let's perform a page move to the correct version with a hyphen. --Gunnar (talk) 23:06, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

It is not a contraction, but an archaism. In the past, many French adjectives had the same form in the masculine and in the feminine. Grand was one of them. Now, grand generally becomes grande in the feminine, but it remains grand is some expressions: grand-mère, grand-faim, grand-peine, grand-croix, grand-rue and grand-place. BrightRaven (talk) 14:07, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I have interpreted the development of language in the same way from la grande place to Grand'Place (proper name in a simplified form) to Grand-Place (further development), which is quite similar to the concatenation of base ball -> base-ball -> baseball. Gunnar (talk) 15:59, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

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