Talk:Gat (landform)

Moved

I moved this from Gat (landform) to Gut (coastal geography). It seems to me that in English the name is "gut" is used more (Digby Gut, Hull Gut, The Gut at Biddeford Pool) although there's also Fisherman's Gat. German may be another story but German use is not our concern. Also it's not really a landform, so I called it "coastal geography". Gut (coastal passage) might have been better, don't know, if you want to move it to that, fine. Herostratus (talk) 21:29, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Expert advice requested

It's all rather confusing, what is the difference between a "gut" and "gat", if they are just different names for the same thing, or what. The article was translated from the German originally and this may be adding to the confusion. There're few refs and googling the term "gut" is going to be different. I hope I got it right but who knows. Herostratus (talk) 21:29, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

According to Whittow's Physical Geography, a gut is "a narrow river channel or strait prior to joining an open ocean or estuary", whereas a gat is defined as (1) "an inshore channel or strait dividing an offshore island from the mainland e.g. the Frisian Islands of NW Europe" or (2) "an opening through a line of sea cliffs allowing access to the coast from inland". Diercke' Wörterbuch Allgemeine Geographie more specifically says that a Gat or Seegat (English: gat or tidal inlet) refers to the relatively narrow channels between the islands in the Wadden Sea..." (Of course, as the original article explained - proper names don't always line up with these definitions.)

What has happened here is that an article constructed on the [European?] term "gat" - which is very much a North and Baltic Sea term as both dictionaries imply - has been expanded into an article covering a similar, but not identical [American?] term "gut", hence the confusion. I suggest they are split and wonder if you would mind doing this? In terms of naming, if you look at Category:Fluvial landforms you'll see that waterbodies like braided river, stream and swamp are included, which is why the succinct disambiguator "landform" was chosen. But that's less critical than unscrambling the difference between gut and gat. --Bermicourt (talk) 08:57, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I was coming to somewhat the same conclusion myself. Yes, I'll take a shot at it. What I'll do first is separate this article into two sections "gut" and "gat". Herostratus (talk) 16:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm having a fair amount of difficulty with this. For one thing, I can't read German and I'm relying on Google Translate. (This is why I gave the translation of "Seegatt" as "tidal inlet"; this is what Google, using whatever dictionary or algorithm they do, does.)

To some extent, it seems that "gat" is the German and Dutch word for some types of water passage rather than an actual particular type of water passage. Can there be "gats" in the Caribbean or Indonesia? If not, then "gat" is just a foreign word. We do not say that "sierra" is a type of mountain range, with some typical examples found in Spain. Sierra is the Spanish word for "mountain range", it's not a specific type of mountain range, and maybe ditto for "gat".

I get that "gat" and variations are parts of proper names, but this is not really significant. Translation of proper geographical names is haphazard and random and means little. However, "Gat" is found in the English names Fisherman's Gat and Cockle Gat and so on; these are proper names so that counts for little, but not for nothing, and and then Whittow's Physical Geography makes a stab at defining "gat".

According to Whittow, a "gat" is "an inshore channel or strait dividing an offshore island from the mainland 'for example the Frisian Islands of NW Europe". Since Whittow just gives the Frisians as an example, he implies that we could speak of the gats of the Canadian arctic or the Phillipines. Whittow is wrong about "gut" though (Hull Gut is not "a narrow river channel or strait prior to joining an open ocean or estuary") and that makes me not inclined to trust him.

Anyway, here's what I propose to do, in the next couple days when I get time:

• Restore this article to its original name ([[Gat landform)
• Essentially restore to it's original state before I started messing with it
• And then make some (fairly minor) changes, mainly:
  • Remove the statements that "gat" and "gut" are the same thing, and basically remove all references to "gut".
  • Retain the list of proper names with "Gat" in them, which you added.
  • Retain my formatting of the references, since I've already done the work.
  • Remove the citing of Pierer's Universal Lexicon for anything other than the name of the particular passage at Pilau, since that's all that the ref supports
  • Make any other minor fixes and tweaks to make it hang it together properly.
• Finally, make an entirely new article titled "Gut (landform)" or similar. The two articles should reference each other.

Absent objection, I'll do this within the next couple days. Herostratus (talk) 16:55, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna

1. return the article to it's original form of yesterday, excepting adding the list of proper names.
2. rename it back to its original name
3. nominate it for deletion since it's a foreign term.

Couple of comments on that:

I don't think we can say it's a foreign term since a) it appears in an English Dictionary of Geography and b) it is "translated" by Dierke's German Geographical Dictionary (which has English translations) into English as "gat". So it seems to be an accepted English term, borrowed from the German e.g. like bodden and which is quite localized in its use.

Basing a definition on proper names is a risk since proper names are not always "accurate" e.g. the Kattegat is clearly not a gat by the definition. We can't therefore say Whittow is wrong based on Hull Gut. If we can find other authoritative sources that say something different from Whittow and Diercke, then that's something else. We have to go by the sources.

My suggestion is that if you want to add information to Wikipedia on the, equally valid, term "gut", you will want to find appropriate geographical sources that provide a definition plus additional information about the term. Whittow gives you one definition, which is a start; there should be other sources.

I don't think there's a good case for deleting the "gat" article since it's clearly and authoritatively sourced. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:32, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. And also moved Herostratus's draft into mainspace. Jenks24 (talk) 07:55, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

---

Gut (coastal geography) → Gat (landform) – The original article about gats has been conflated with the similar, but not identical term, gut (see above discussion). My proposal is to revert the name and subject back to gat (landform) and to create separate article on the coastal gut if need be. --Relisted. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 06:58, 4 August 2014 (UTC) Bermicourt (talk) 08:01, 28 July 2014 (UTC) --Bermicourt (talk) 08:01, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

• OK this is probably the best thing. I feel badly about mucking up this article by trying to shoehorn these two different terms together. Let's fix this.

I have created an article for "gut", here: User:Herostratus/Gut (coastal geography). It's essentially unreferenced and is to some extent original research -- but not really so much, since the bluelinks (presumed to have their own references and if not that's their problem) provide many examples, sufficient to establish the general veracity of the material, IMO. Obviously that's far from ideal, but no reason for the article not exist since it's true and can be established to be true by the reader (by following the bluelinks and inferring from the material there), and is tagged for reference improvement. Somewhere there's got a printed source or something to ref all that, so let's see how that plays out.

So what needs to be done is

• Take all all references to "gut" from this article. Just erase them, except to mention the term "gut" in passing as a somewhat related term. I have taken the liberty of doing this (and making other useful changes) subject of course to revision or reverting or other editing.
• Move this article to "Gat (landform)" or whatever.
• Move User:Herostratus/Gut (coastal geography) to "Gut (coastal geography)" over the redirect (another name like "Gut (geography)" would be OK, but guts aren't mainly terrestrial features).
• Fix Coastal geography and possibly other places (links, Glossary of geography terms maybe, etc.) to reflect all this.

I have no idea if this is legit in terms of attribution. It might be a nightmare of history merges or whatever to make everything all Sir Garnet in that respect. Or not. That's up to the admin doing the moves. Herostratus (talk) 23:17, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi HS. I'm just back from a short break so only just saw this. I like your article and it's sensible for them to mention each other. Once we get the go ahead from an admin, we can put your plan above into action. --Bermicourt (talk) 16:42, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Interestingly, although it seems a little odd I agree, the article on landform suggests they can be "waterbody interface features", but "coastal geography" is in some ways more descriptive, albeit longer. There is little consistency on Wikipedia; perhaps its something for WP:WikiProject Geography to consider in due course. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:05, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.