Talk:Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen

Requested move

Standard English spelling of this name from the entry on the WP:RM page. – AxSkov (☏)

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Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

• Support. See above. – AxSkov (☏) 09:26, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. See below. Markussep 10:27, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Philip Baird Shearer 18:44, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
• Support, title is not in standard Latin alphabet. 67.71.169.168 04:52, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Mark 14:22, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Let's set guidelines rather than fight 1000s of separate battles. –Hajor 19:19, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is the third argument of exactly this form I have put an opinion on in the last 15 mins. So let's follow the proposal of –Hajor above. Edinborgarstefan 21:10, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Proper names from languages written in the Latin alphabet need no transliteration. There are a bunch of Icelandic articles starting with 'Þ' for example. And I too would like to vote on this in one place rather than 1000. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 21:13, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Tree&Leaf 07:55, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose, if the town had an English name, of course we would use that. But the town has no English name, so we use the German name. And the German name is spelled with ß. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 06:37, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: Of coarse this is a German name, but we should use English spelling (English Wikipedia after all). The character ß isn't used by English speakers even when referring to German names. Also not all German speakers use this character either. Mark 07:26, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Counter-comment: I'm an English speaker, and I use ß everywhere it belongs. Only Swiss German does not use ß as widely as elsewhere, but this article deals with a German place, not Swiss, and in Germany everyone uses ß. --Stemonitis 07:46, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Comment: Well then you are an unusual English speaker, as ß is replaced by 'ss' by the vast majority of English speakers. I'm an English speaker too, and I always replace ß with 'ss', because this is an acceptable practice. Swiss German doesn't use ß at all. Mark 08:12, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
      • I agree with Stemonitis. Many English speakers do use ß in German names when writing in English, especially if they know German and understand when to use ß and when to use ss. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 12:28, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
    • And most English speakers don't use ß. Mark 14:11, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose, oppose oppose. --Stemonitis 07:18, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose. In the absence of a commonly used English variant, all "foreign" place-names should maintain their spelling in both article name and text. The fact that most English speakers wouldn't use the eszett is irrelevant; after all, most English speakers would also refer to "Holland" when they meant the "Netherlands". An encyclopedia's duty is to educate, not level information down, and that includes little things such as spelling. [However, the alternative spelling without <ß> should be referred to in the article's introductory text.] Silverhelm 09:30, 13 October 2005 (UTC).
• Oppose move to -ss-. I am still undecided about Gauß and Johann Strauß II and maybe even Franz Josef Strauß, but Weißenburg–Gunzenhausen is fine. (An en-dash instead of a hyphen would be called for, however!) Arbor 10:52, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
• Totally Oppose. As a German-speaker I can tell you that writing it with a "ss" can be misleading, not only from the pronounciation. The "ß" and the "ss" both exist in German. Weißenburg is written with an "ß", anything deviating from that is not correct. Gryffindor 01:19, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
• Support since ß is a ligature for double s, after all, not a letter, and is frequently written as "ss" even by German speakers and almost always by some German speakers. To do otherwise in the English Wikipedia, where most readers are not familiar with ß and may confuse it with B, is not the best service to the reader. No Account
• Support. The ß character does not appear in Latin alphabet, nor is it in the modern English alphabet. Quintusdecimus
• Oppose because User:Gryffindor is quite right! --Schubbay 23:08, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

Pending the discussion on diacritics, ß, etcetera on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English) let's not start moving everything with ß to ss. I doubt the existence of an official English name for this German district. Markussep 10:27, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

• Diacritics are one thing, but ß is not English. If this is an acceptable title, then so is Смирнов, as there are two romanizations to this. Anything with a non-English letter should be renamed. 67.71.169.168 05:11, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The hypothetical clueless monolingual English speaker who is frequently assumed by diacritics-detractors to compose the vast majority of Wikipedia's readers will indeed have trouble reading "Смирнов". She will have much less trouble with "Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen". If she doesn't recognize 'ß' she will presumably take it for a variant of 'B'. Two such clueless monolingual English speakers will thus probably produce a similar pronunciation of the word. They won't, for example, have problems discussing the word over a telephone. In any case we should provide a 'ss' version in the lead to help such people. Also please remember that people who read articles on German places are likely to be actually interested in Germany and maybe even know a fact or two about the German language. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 22:38, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

But this is English Wikipedia NOT German or Icelandic or some other weird-arsed language with funny characters. Since this is English Wikipedia we should use the English version "Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen" for the article, and the German version in the first line as a disambig. Mark 05:33, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Please tone down the derogatory attitude towards other languages. "Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen" isn't an English spelling, it's just a misspelling. There is no English spelling for this name. And please use ~~~~ to sign your name, since you are apparently not Mark. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 12:35, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course I'm Mark, I should know my own name! I never said I was the User:Mark. A misspelling in German maybe, but not in English. After all there is an English spelling. Mark 13:02, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I can only re-iterate what previous contribuors have stated here and elsewhere. There is no English name for Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen; our only alternative is to use the German name, which can only be correctly spelled with ß. Haukur is right to point out that someone reading an article about a German-speaking town may well either know something about German language and culture, or want to. --Stemonitis 07:18, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

A suggestion: why don't we create a template so that the easily-confused readers can be reassured, and the correct title can be kept, sort of like a reverse of the "this title is incorrect for technical reasons" message:

The title of this article contains a character not found in the standard English alphabet. Please see ß for information about that character. Note that the title may sometimes be rendered as Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen to avoid using ß.

, which would be expanded from something like {{diacritic|ß|Weissenburg-Gunzhausen}}. How about that? --Stemonitis 07:18, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I like it! "This title is correct for technical reasons" ;) - Haukur Þorgeirsson 18:44, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a bad compromise. Mark 08:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

For why, Mark, for why? --Stemonitis 08:19, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Because it doesn't make any sense at all. Mark 08:41, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Please be more specific in your objections. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 18:44, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Let me also say that I think the suggestion of Stemonitis is excellent, it would be very simple to use, doesn't clutter the first sentence of the article but explains the problem very clearly. Edinborgarstefan 13:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd agree that Stemonitis's suggestion seems like the way forward. Silverhelm 19:05, 14 October 2005 (UTC).

Decision

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. (proposal was to Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen be renamed and moved to Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen )Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:48, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Had I been paying attention before this was closed, my vote would have been to support moving the article to use English-language spelling. older≠wiser 00:58, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Second. Markussep does have a point; but no evidence has been presented. We should default to English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:48, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

This issue does need to be revisited. The ß pushers are framing the issue in a way that makes their stance seem reasonable, but which in fact flies in the face of the intent of WP:UE. Unschool 03:36, 2 September 2007 (UTC)