Talk:Great Mell Fell

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[edit] Pronunciation

I'm not sure we need a pronunciation on something like this where all the words are (or might as well be) in English. And even if the locals do pronounce it with a glottal stop, the 't' should probably have been included. --Stemonitis 07:55, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology

Now comes the tricky part — how to translate "Great Mell Fell" and other similar things. In Welsh, there are two words "moel", one an adjective and one a noun. The noun means "hill", tending to be used for rounded hills, and the adjective means "bare". "Moel" does not, therefore, mean "bare hill", as is often stated; "Moel Foel" (which I'm sure is a real hill somewhere) is 'bare hill'. I assume that the same holds true for Gaelic. And that leads me to the next point: how do we know that the "mell" in "Great Mell Fell" is from Scottish Gaelic? It seems much more likely that it would come from Cumbric, which was spoken in the area only a thousand years ago. I would suggest "Great"=large (English), "Mell"=rounded hill (Cumbric), "Fell"=hill (Norse). --Stemonitis 07:55, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Just a thought

This probably isn't the place to propose this, but I'm guessing that both Mark and Stem are watching this page at th moment, and it is relevant to the above comments. How about we cahnge the MTNbox UK so that it only has grid ref and listing in it, and move the "name" (translation, language, pronunciation) to the Pronunciation box. These are only relevant for some hill, (e.g not Great Mell Fell, but yes for the Scottish or Welsh ones) and could then be left off. The above discussion about where the name might have come from could be reformatted to actually appear in the article, which would be better than a simple line in the infobox. Grinner 11:06, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. That would get rid of a lot of "n/a" and "???" entries on English hills with easy names. Propose it somewhere. I'll be incommunicado for the next week, but you can proxy for me on this one, if needs be. --Stemonitis 12:45, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mountains/General#British_Hill_Infoboxes_again