Talk:Château
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The page's title is "Chateau" (without circumflex) but the definition and most occurrences in the page are "château". On the other hand many links about specific palaces use "Chateau". Shouldn't tey all be "Château"?
Even the French don't care any more... Wetman 04:52, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I am trusting you, and replacing all château by chateau, keeping only as an alternate spelling. Jorge Stolfi 23:49, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
By now, it actually doesn't care, the circumflex can be dropped at will if it doesn't differentiate between two words (as in sûr and sur (sour and over)), due to a reform of French orthography which was formulated ten years ago and is beginning to be adopted.
- The French do care, and so do careful English writers. In the specific case of the latter a, a circumflex alters the pronunciation and needs to be kept. There is, for example, a big difference between tache (stain) and tâche (task). I'm going to standardise on château. — Chameleon My page/My talk 18:48, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I've always been taught (and experience seems to indicate) that the circumflex indicates that a letter (generally s') was probably dropped at some point in the past. (Old Provençal castèl—the c > ch change is also common. I don't know about Old French.) [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]]
Question: What, besides being French, distinguishes a château from a castle? The two words are often used as translations for each other. The current separation between Category:Castles and Category:Châteaux leaves one with the curious impression that there are no castles in France, although List of castles includes the lot of them. [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 22:27, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- In French, château = castle, including fortified castles. In some English usage, chateau is used for large manor-like constructions in the French style. David.Monniaux 15:16, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
"The next step down in France is a maison de campagne, a "country house" with the usual English connotations of the word. There is a distinction in French between a maison de campagne and one that is merely a maison à la campagne, a "house in the country," perhaps a weekending retreat."
I don't see what connotations are implied, and I'm a native French speaker. "Maison à la campagne" means "house in the countryside" and is not a ready-made phrase; "maison de campagne" means a vacation home in the countryside, however modest. David.Monniaux 15:16, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] McMansion
I thought the assertion that large houses in NE US as "McMansions" is dubious. Since there are no pics of such houses, and the only link to the DuPont family suggests these may be houses from the mid 1800s, I hesitate to link these to the architectural term of the 1980/90/2000s. Even if the houses of the DuPont families are knock offs or copies of authentic European chateaux (which they probably are), I think most people would nnot link a 150 yr old mansion and the current trend of pre-fab, ostentatious housing built 5 years ago. --Cbradshaw 19:39, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
