Talk:National anthem of South Africa

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[edit] Link

Without the Afrikaans and english it is not the national anthem of South Africa thus the link should be removed as it plays some song that is not the official anthem of South Africa!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.90.105.63 (talk • contribs) 11:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On respecting primary sources

Dwo,

Have you taken a look at the external links at the bottom of this article and read them? Was not this article an almost verbatim copy of the prime source? .... hunting for and removing two … letters from articles which numerous South Africans find acceptable (just like changing instances of kilometers to miles, this is truly not productive).

Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 08:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

(Personal attack removed) — D. Wo. 00:48, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The primary sources on included in this article use Sotho along with Sesotho. Since the article for this language is located at Sotho language instead of Sesotho, it is fitting that this article use Sotho. Besides, unless the article is directly quoting the sources in question, there is no need to retain the original words verbatim. — D. Wo. 21:29, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I was about to offer a third opinion per your request, but I see that there is no dispute. Unless you are in dispute with another editor, 3O is not relevant. For what it is worth, I visited the Sotho article and found "Sesotho is, and has always been, the name of the language in the language itself, and this term has come into wider use in English and other non-Bantu languages since the 1980s", which confirms what I had thought. Adrian M. H. 22:21, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

(Interjection: The dispute was hard to see because a post had been removed.) — Athaenara ✉ 04:51, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

This is all news to me... o.O?

I think the main difference of opinion here (and I'm trying to be nice) is about whether or not the popularity of view is a pointer of its correctness, though this is obviously a lot more complicated than that as revealed e.g. in some edit summaries etc.

Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 22:36, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Having read the Third Opinion request, I believe that Sotho is the correct term to use. I say this because this is the English wikipedia, and in general English names should be used, particularly in articles dealing with countries as multi-lingual as South Africa. Otherwise, for example, we would need to makes changes such as "Zulu" to "isuZulu", and arguably a great deal more, until eventually it would become impossible to read the article without knowing many languages. There might also be cases where two non-English languages could be argued to be the "right" language to use. According to WP:ENGLISH, English is the language to be used in cases of doubt. SheffieldSteel 00:47, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

And I put it to you that Sesotho is a perfectly acceptable and commonly used name in the English name. I believe that "Sotho" is more confusing in an article as it can mean quite a lot of things (Sesotho language, Basotho, Northern Sotho, Sepedi, Sotho-Tswana, Sotho-Tswana languages) although "Sesotho" can ultimately only refer to one thing.

There are numerous arguments I've made about this all over Wikipedia, more numerous and less condescending and empty than "WP is in English", and I ask all involved to please do their research first, because I'm tired. Thank you.

Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 09:15, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

By your reasoning, the official national languages of Canada should be English and Français. I'm sorry to hear that you have had to make arguments all over wikipedia on the subject. I suggest you concentrate your efforts on renaming the Sotho language page to Sesotho language, after which you will have a very strong precedent for changing this and every other case - I for one would certainly have no opposition to changing the entry on this page, assuming you can get agreement for the above move. SheffieldSteel 19:47, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about the Canadian constitution -- does the English version say that the official languages are "English and French" or "English and Francais"? The South African constitution speaks of "Sesotho." That's yet another point I've raised repeatedly which everyone seems to ignore. Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 20:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Third opinion

This seems pretty clear to me, and I am unsure why there is even a debate. The primary source from the South African government is in English, and it uses the term "Sesotho" - in fact "Sotho" doesn't appear anywhere on that page. I agree above that "Sotho" would be ambiguous in this context. =Axlq 04:55, 18 June 2007 (UTC)