Talk:Arête

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Is Arete or Arête the correct spelling for this landform? --Gabriel Beecham/Kwekubo 00:17, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, Google test: Arete glacier yields 8560 hits, Arête glacier 11,110 hits. But, when restricted to English-only pages, the former yielded 7530 hits, while latter only yielded 884 hits. So, I suspect that Arête is the French term, Arete is the English. Not definitive, though. -- hike395 05:30, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Don't trust Google with any questions involving accented words! Arête is AFAIK the correct spelling in English, though the unaccented form is inevitably a common variant and not surprisingly the dominant form on web pages. I think this page should be moved to Arête, which has the further advantage that the suffix "(landform)" isn't needed to distinguish it from a Greek word. --Blisco 21:51, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm arriving late in this discussion, but the move would be supported by the Glossary of Geology (written in English), which uses the word with the circumflex, and while most geologists often use the word sloppily without, my feeling is that in formal writing the circumflex is used more often. Cheers Geologyguy 17:07, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Requested move

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was Move. Duja 08:19, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Arete (landform) → Arête – More correct spelling and one that doesn't need to be disambiguated from unrelated meanings. --Blisco 22:22, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

  • Oppose. Moving to Arête would contradict WP guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) hike395 05:48, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. The OED gives: "arête: A sharp ascending ridge or ‘edge’ of a mountain. The local name in French Switzerland, whence it has become a technical term with mountain-climbers." and doesn't even mention a spelling "arete". Ê is part of the Latin alphabet. --Stemonitis 14:03, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support; spelled with circumflex in all dictionaries and encyclopaedias I have checked. Aquilina 11:26, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support per Stemonitis. Recury 23:56, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support per Blisco (below). Vicarious 06:20, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support as this is the correct spelling (it remains a foreign word however, and I would not call it an English word as in the discussion below!). There should be of course a link from the Arete disambiguation page. One should also take into account that many users using standard english keyboards have no idea how to type diacritics and often omit them. LHOON 11:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

[edit] (use English)

The "use English" guideline directs us to specifically use Latin-only titles for WP articles. This is sensible, because for searching and linking, that is what people can easily type at their keyboard with no special keystrokes. I don't think we should overturn this guideline to avoid disambiguation hike395 05:48, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

"Use the Latin alphabet" means don't use e.g. Greek or Arabic letters or Chinese characters; letters with diacritics such as ê are just as much part of the Latin alphabet as e is. And arête is an English word: it's spelt that way by Bartleby and, I suspect, any dictionary you care to consult (though I can't verify that at the moment); it's also on Wikipedia's own List of English words with diacritics. So any references in articles should be spelt that way anyway, and therefore linking needn't be an issue. Moreover, anyone typing "arete" into the search box is already taken to a disambiguation page, so it makes little difference what the next link they click on is called. The actual Wikipedia guidelines on cases like this are the bottom of the page you cited (under Disputed issues), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision), and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics). Admittedly the issue is not at all clear-cut, but it seems that the existence of different meanings with or without diacritics can be a factor in deciding whether or not to use them. --Blisco 11:59, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree the subject is a bit hazy but I think this does fall into the Disputed issues section of WP:NC(UE) which had a small majority of votes in favor is using diacritics. Because it was a majority but not a concensus I'm willing to discard it all together, but ignoring conventions I agree with Blisco. Vicarious 06:20, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
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