Category talk:Norwegian Canadians

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[edit] Controversial name change of this category and many others

I want to comment on the name change done for this and many other "<National/Ethnic group>-Americans" categories. I do not think the grammatical argument is enough as a reason for the consistent non-use of middle hyphens. My experience with e.g. "Norwegian-Americans" suggests that the use of the hyphen is at least as common as w/o the hyphen---significantly, in many if not most official circumstances, such as in the names of Nor-Am associations/foundations/other organizations---and as such, the hyphen in this case must be considered proper, regardless of the academically grammatical correctness. And for Norwegian-Canadians in particular, the use of the hyphen is even more prevalent, to the degree that I wouldn't hesitate to label that use as the correct one.

Based on this, I disagree completely with the decision that was made in renaming the categories, and would suggest a de-renaming for at least the "Norwegian-<Nationality>" categories. Too bad I wasn't aware of the discussion when it took place. As for the rest of the "<National/Ethnic group>-Americans" perhaps the best solution is, like for the Norwegian emigrant groups, to base the naming on the most common usage, since that is actually the de facto standard and should be respected. I know this might look a little awkward, as it is indeed inconsistent as such, but, as I'm sure you know, consistency does not always take precedence in human language matters, despite what we'd prefer (especially being a computer programmer like myself, I might add...). --Wernher 23:09, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Your next step would be to submit a CFR of your own. Either for just this one category, or for them all, to move back to the hyphenated name. In one way, doing just one would be simpler, as you would only be seeking to undo one action. But you will likely run into resistance from people who like consistency across categories. People who would oppose moving only one, but might support or at least stay out of a move to all. Given that the original move passed because of a total of two votes, it might not be hard to persuade people that the return move is better, especially if you present logical reasons for the reverse moves. - TexasAndroid 00:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: 'Norwegian Canadians' compared with 'Norwegian-Canadian associations':

Hello there. I posted the category name change through the proper channels - on the Wikipedia:Categories for deletion - to nominate the name change. the grammar is straightforward - adjective describing noun in the first instance (as i ve put in the headline), whereas "compound adjectives" are hyphenated to show the order of the adjectives are set, that is to differentiate between say 'Canadian-Norwegian association of ...' (any association involving Norwegian nationals of Canadian descent) and a 'Norwegian-Canadian association of...' (any association involving Canadian nationals of Norwegian descent). i argue in naming categories correct grammar supersedes de facto use by some or even many. however in addition in this case, a google search for both "norwegian-canadians" and "norwegian canadians" provideds the same 108 hits, of which approximately 4:1 of users use Norwegian Canadians, without the hyphen. Mayumashu 03:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

But google (or any other search engine I know of, and I've checked a lot) doesn't discriminate between hyphenated phrases and non-hyphenated ones... So I'm afraid your statistics aren't very informative... --Wernher 03:40, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

i went through and "hand checked" to come up with the ratio (- that s what i meant by the same 108 hits) Mayumashu 03:50, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, I sincerely apologize for insinuating otherwise re google. :-( No insult taken, I hope. However, when I myself made a quick eyeball search of the two "alternative hyphenations" based on my simple google search, I seemed to come up with at least as many occurrences with hyphens as without. ??? (Disclaimer: I didn't hand check all 680+ hits, and some of the hits are probably more or less duplicates of each other). As for a potential re-renaming of this category, I do withhold that de facto use by a majority should be just as weighty as "de jure rule(s) and general consistency preferrences (however much I like such consistency myself, as mentioned above). --Wernher 05:07, 23 February 2006 (UTC)