Talk:Nazareth Illit

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[edit] On English transliteration of names of Israeli cities

Gilgamesh, it's been a while since you last renamed an article on an Israeli city, and I see you're at it again (renaming Nazerat Illit to Naẓerat ʻIllit and I want to, again, express my dismay and try to convince you otherwise.

The problem is that names of existing cities are not appropriate subjects for academic discussion, theorizing or even arguments. As you can imagine, English is commonly used in Israel (as it is in the rest of the world), and in fact most road signs also feature English town names. As such, all towns have official English transliterations, and these names, as well as non-official variants, are often used by residents of these cities, and other Israelis, in their English correspondence.

This is why we find it extremely strange, to say the list, when we find an article under Naẓerat ʻIllit - not only this is not the spelling we're used to, but worse: some of the characters in that name are not even English (or Latin characters), so this is definitely not the English transliteration you'd expect to see in an English encyclopedia.

On the Israeli Central Beauro of Statistics site you can find this file, which is an Excel-format table listing all Israeli localities and a lot of information about them (population, coordinates etc.). But the column that will interest you the most is the "Place name in English" column. Next to נצרת עילית in Hebrew (yes, in so-called ktiv-maleh and an added yod), they list "NAZERAT ILLIT". Like that, with no strange characters, no accents, no "th", no apostrophes, nothing.

The official spelling doesn't prevent alternative spellings from appearing. One example, used the city's website, is Nazareth Illit. This alternative spelling uses the fact that for the first part of the city's name, an English spelling has long ago been established - Nazareth - so we can use that instead of the more modern spelling.

But, believe it or not, no resident of Nazerat Illit, when asked to fill his address in English, will write "Naẓerat ʻIllit". It's simply a name that you invented.

If you are concerned that an English reader will see the name "Nazerat Illit" and won't know how to pronounce it, then stop worrying. You can add pronunciation hints to the article. This issue has nothing to do with Hebrew or Israel whatsoever; An english speaker will face the same problem when trying to guess how to say Illinois, Uitenhage, Baton Rouge, and so on. But people still write, say, Illinois - all your learned explanation that phonetically we should just write "Illinoi", without the final "s", will not change the fact that the town's name is written in English as "Illinois", with that useless "s" at the end. Similarly, explanations why "Naẓerat ʻIllit" is the most logical spelling will not change the fact that nobody uses that spelling.

Of course, if you believe that anybody does use the spelling "Naẓerat ʻIllit", I'd love to see a reference.

Please, also see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) which explicitly says that what you're trying to do (article names with non-English characters) is wrong.

Nyh 12:05, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for replying to myself, but I just find your "Naẓerat ʻIllit" spelling in world-gazetteer.com [2] I wonder where they got this spelling from, or why they spell Naẓerat with a dot on the "z", but "Herzeliyya" with a normal z (though both have the sane Hebrew leter tsadi). So I wouldn't use this as a source. Nyh 12:24, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't use gazetteers—I use linguistic transliteration rules. To be honest, I'd forgotten about most of the old discussion. As for non-English characters, I thought it was still permissible after all the inherent problems with Turkish articles, where simplistic spellings like "Mahir Cagri" instead of Mahir Çağrı are eyesores. I presumed the same issue applies to transliterations of Israeli place names—I knew that a few notable places had official transliterations ("Haifa", "Tel Aviv", "Safed", etc.), but I thought the less notable places without websites were fair game, especially when spellings constantly differ over different media sources. If the articles should be renamed, I won't oppose it. - Gilgamesh 13:18, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

The case with Turkish articles is less clear-cut than in Hebrew, because Turkish does use Latin characters with extra accents and like in the Turkish city official and common spelling. The special characters that you used, on the other hand, are not Hebrew characters, and that spelling is neither official nor common.

By the way, even with Turkish, my personal belief is that too much of those accepts on the English Wikipedia is silly. After I wrote the Tunel article, someone renamed it with an Umlaut. Recently, someone renamed even the Istanbul article to have a dot on the I.

Nyh 13:40, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree with Nyh. Although I greatly respect your linguistic efforts (being a linguist-wannabe myself), there is an official English spelling for each Israeli locality. Some unofficial transliterations were used in articles (e.g. Petah-Tikva instead of official Petah-Tiqwa), because they are much more common, but this does not apply to every place and certainly names with weird symbols are not more common. For example, the city Arad is spelled Arad everywhere. I don't think you'll find a single major source where an apostrophe is used, even though if begins with ayin. I've left a message on your talk page even before I noticed this discussion, so please reply to that, after which I'll likely move the articles back. -- Ynhockey || Talk 17:31, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] older discussion

I have moved Názerat Illit back to Nazerat Illit using the "move" function. This is the proper way to revert article moves, as it preserves the edit histories. Moving by copy/pasting article texts from one article name to another is against the rules. - Gilgamesh 13:28, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

By the way, I wonder where the spelling "Nazerat Illit" used in the article comes from. If we used the official Academy of the Hebrew Language transliteration rules, we'd have had "th" for tav and ` for the Ayin, so we'd have "Nazerath `illith". If we drop these formalities, we do get "Nazerat Illit" - but I'm not sure why the "e" for a shwav-nach (which is a complete stop)? I'd rather see "Nazrat Illit" (with the understanding the the Z is pronounced liek in german), or "Natsrat Illit". But then again, the name the article now uses is the name that the municipality uses, which I do hope they researched a bit because they used it. By the way, frankly, I don't understand why the Hebrew name of the town is written as נצרת עילית. It should be, in ktiv-chaser, נצרת עלית without that additional yod... And, yes, I know that the website again agrees with what is currently written. Nyh 15:10, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The "ə" is because the first "a" is an open qamaz (&#257), just like the first "a" in names like Asenath and Basemath. These too are often contracted to "Asnat" and "Basmat" in Israeli Hebrew. It's a throwback from Mishnaic vocalization, where āC-C was not possible in Hebrew (āCəC was required instead), because it forbade nearly all consonant clusters that Israeli Hebrew permits so freely. Also, despite Hebrew Language Academy conventions, I have never seen an Israeli city name that uses "th" unless it's based off the English or Arabic version of the name, as in "Nazareth". - Gilgamesh 21:11, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You're right. I just checked the dictionary, and indeed the first vowel is the long qamaz. I was quite surprised to see it, and not a patach. Well, you live and learn ;) Interestingly, the dictionary shows the "Nazrat" vowelization also for the original Arabic city of Nazareth, not just for the upper city. This conflicts with how the people I know call that city - Nazeret", with two segolim. Maybe I need to delete the pronunciation "explanation" I wrote in the article, if it's not universally correct for Israeli Hebrew speakers (naturally, the Arabic speakers pronounce the name of their city differently). Nyh 07:55, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] History section

The new history section I just added was based on the recent academic study referenced. I didn't add a citation for each sentence because it looks really ugly and they would all be to the same source. Forman gives copious primary sources for everything I have written. Within severe limits, I can send a copy of this study to anyone who asks (send mail by the link on my user page). To save someone asking, here are the coordinates of Forman as given on the paper: "Geremy Forman teaches in the Land of Israel Studies Department at the University of Haifa and the Radzyner School of Law at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya." --Zero^talk 11:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I also have an academic study of Arab settlement in Naraeth Illit, but I'll get to that at a later date. --Zero^talk 11:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)