Talk:Szczecin Bismarck tower

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[edit] Eagles

Where are the eagles that were on the top of the tower?

[edit] English place name for the city

The English language name for this now Polish city is Stettin. It appears 'some' Poles do not want to accept this fact and try to insist we English speakers use the Slavic Polish name. How many times must we tell them it is NOT phonetic to the English speaking tongue to pronounce 'Szczecin'.

This has got nothing to do with Politics and Nationalism so will you please accept the fact English is part of the Germanic language group and No you cannot change our language history.


English is NOT a Slavic Language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.101.139.240 (talk) 14:29, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Polish 'Friends' playing silly outdated games

I have been alerted to this attack on the English language just recent.

(Thank you Marek).

It appears Polish nationalists on Wikipedia are in a perverse parallel with the former Polish communist Government in attempting to airbrush actual facts of history. While some people will find this amusing and extremely funny in the EU it is actually quite serious in being insulting and racist to English speaking people. These people whom have been raised under communist rule do Not respect English place names that still remain the same for hundreds of years which seems to be a BIG problem for them ??

The English wikipedia is not being politically correct or responsible to the actual English language by being held hostage to such 'politically motivated' word games by some nationalist Poles hatred of the nation called Germany.

Lets face reality in 2008!! this is what this attack on the English language is all about.

This is so disappointing considering how many Poles live and work in English speaking nations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Filsdegilbert (talk • contribs) 20:32, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

The English language develops. It certainly doesn't have a fixed name for every foreign town (only some very well known ones like Warsaw, Rome, etc.) In historical contexts we tend to use the name which was then current (cf. Byzantium-Constantinople-Istanbul), so yes, in history books about certain periods you would expect to see Stettin, Danzig etc. But when referring to places in a modern context, we use their current names - Szczecin, Gdańsk. Recall the UK news reporting on the Solidarity events in the 1980s - reference was always to Gdansk.--Kotniski (talk) 20:48, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I have left a response at User_talk:Filsdegilbert. A couple of remarks:
  • What makes you think that the editors who revert your changes are Polish? Or lived under Communist rule? en.wikipedia is edited by English speakers from all over the world. I edited Uvs Nuur [1] but I'm not Mongolian!
  • Why shouldn't we use the name for the city that Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encarta, Columbia Encyclopedia, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, The New York Times, The Australian and the BBC use? (See User_talk:Filsdegilbert for evidence) Are *all* these publications not speaking English? Are all of them disrespecting English-speakers? A fair proportion of the English-speaking world reads one or other of these and I haven't heard the complaints...
    • [2]] [3]. [4] [5]. Upto WWII English used to use the German forms. Modern English uses the current indigenous form, and it is becoming increasingly anachronistic to use the German form.
  • English speakers are not a race. You cannot be racist to English speakers as a whole.

Knepflerle (talk) 00:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)